Two Corporate Crises

Maybe it's because even conservative media seems to be on permanent spring break, but one observation I simply haven't seen is that both the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney fiasco and Tucker Carlson's firing from Fox are textbook corporate crises. I sometimes worked in corporate contingency planning when I worked, so I have some familiarity with the field.

Of the two, Anheuser-Busch seems to be the company that belatedly recognized it was facing a textbook crisis, but its response was, and continues to be, nevertheless textbook wrong. Over the weekend, this news came out:

Anheuser-Busch executives have promised beer distributors that going forward marketing will be heavily screened following Bud Light's Dylan Mulvaney backlash.

Bosses held a closed-door meeting with distributors in Washington, DC, this week where they laid out future plans - and promised to 'spend heavily' on Bud Light to salvage its public image, according to reports.

Accounts differ on exactly how far Bud Light sales have plummeted, but clearly reports of the "closed-door meeting" suggest distributors are nervous. Other reports suggest Bud Light has hired Republican lobbyists to repair its image in Congress. But the Dylan Mulvaney episode began April 1, when they posted a selfie of them holding a Bud Light can with their face on it -- here we are a month later, and all we've really heard has been leaves of absence, cloaed-door meetings, and lobbyists, while Miller Lite and Coors Lite both saw their sales jump more than 17% in the same period.

Poking around the web, I discovered there was actually a similar crisis for Pepsi in 2017, when it released an ad featuring Kendall Jenner:

The world was treated to Jenner leaving a modeling gig to “join the conversation” which she and her fellow marchers seem to “win” after she hands a police officer a Pepsi. The backlash was immediate and fierce, but in Pepsi’s defense, so was their corporate crisis management.

The brand did initially release a statement defending their campaign by saying, “This is a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that’s an important message to convey.”

However, less than 24 hours later the soda company had pulled the ad and paused the campaign entirely. A second statement followed: “Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace, and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologize.”

This is the one strategy that Bud Light hasn't followed -- unlike Pepsi, they didn't pull the endorsement, and they still haven't apologized. Instead, a couple of lower-level executives are just "on leave", and the company is quietly telling distributors they'll spend more on advertising down the road. The site at the link says,

The response from Pepsi was immediate and effective. Like many successful crisis communication examples, the brand showed empathy and promised action. This was the first and most important step in their crisis management process and it paid off. Quick yet effective responses help minimize the risk of long-term effects from negative reactions and prevent them from permanently damaging a brand’s reputation.

But in comparison to Bud Light, Fox's strategy in firing Tucker Carlson is even worse. All we really know is that Tucker is off the air, in circumstances that are unclear, for a reason that nobody can fathom. Sean Hannity, who might have been a public face for the network during the crisis, could say only

My phone has been blowing up all day. The hard part for me is I don’t have a clue. . . I have no idea. Was it Tucker’s decision? Was it Fox’s? Was it a mutual agreement that they had? I don’t know.

Even Carlson himself has little to say:

[N]ow Carlson himself has said that it didn’t actually happen at all. In a text message to the news analysis site 19FortyFive, Carlson said flatly: “I’m still employed by Fox.”

The crisis management site I linked above gives an example of a successful corporate strategy over a firing that involved silence:

In February 2017, Bradley Reid posted on Cracker Barrel’s corporate website asking why his wife Nanette had been fired from the retail-manager job she’d held in an Indiana Cracker Barrel for 11 years.

It wasn’t long before the hashtag #JusticeforBradsWife began trending. Someone even started a Change.org petition for answers that garnered over 17,000 signatures. People began adjusting Yelp and Google pages for the brand to feature photos of Brad’s wife. And other fast food chains began capitalizing on Cracker Barrel’s bad press, including a Chick-fil-A sign emblazoned with “Now Hiring Brad’s Wife!”

. . . The restaurant’s crisis management was, apparently, not to treat this like a crisis. They kept quiet on the issue, never publicly addressing the movement or Brad’s wife. While you’ll still find a few #NotMyCountryStore hashtags littering Cracker Barrel’s social media channels, the firestorm has mostly passed. And the crisis didn’t appear to have any negative effects on the brand’s financial performance.

Cracker Barrel shows us an example of how silence can sometimes be the best form of crisis communication. In fact, while some critics say silence was the worst response, the general consensus is that it wasn’t the disaster everyone thought it would be at the time. While staying silent may be a risk, it can really pay off. The majority of their consumers today are either unaware of the issue, have already forgotten about it, or know what happened but still enjoy eating and shopping there.

I think the key takeaway is that Cracker Barrel is unique; it appeals to a heartland market -- there are 60 Cracker Barrels in Florida, but only 9 in either California or New York. Its customers trust the brand and enjoy eating and shopping there. The individual personnel problem didn't damage customer trust in the brand.

The problem for both Bud Light and Fox is that a pro-trans endorsement and firing Carlson (or whatever that was) damaged trust in a brand in markets that aren't all that different from Cracker Barrel. So far, it appears that Fox isn't even acknowledging it has a problem:

Viewership for the 8 p.m. hour of Fox News, a prime-time television spot occupied by Tucker Carlson for years, has plummeted by half in the days since the anchor was suddenly fired Monday.

. . . The viewers appear to be opting for other conservative networks, as Darcy reported that Newsmax's 8 p.m. hour totaled 510,000 viewers, tripling the audience they drew at the same time last Wednesday. The right-wing alternative to Fox has also been using its airtime to accuse Fox and the Murdoch family of caving to "the left" by firing Carlson, according to the New York Times.

Fox has not publicly confirmed a reason for why Carlson was dismissed from the network, and theories have abounded with possible explanations for his departure.

My surmise here is that Tucker's firing was a fit of pique by Rupert Murdoch himself, and nobody but nobody is in a position to try to manage that particular crisis. The usual crisis management prescriptions -- assuming the crisis must be addressed at all -- involve transparency, communication, acknowledging errors where appropriate, and designating a credible public face for the corporate response. Bud Light has been fumbling with halfway measures, allowing both Dylan Mulvaney himself and the farcical Alissa Heinerscheid to remain the public faces of their strategy.

But so far, Fox's strategy appears to have been infinitely worse. Both crises involve major misunderstandings of their market -- or possibly in Murdoch's case, simply ignoring his market in a fit of jealousy at Carlson's success -- that I think reveal bigger issues underlying the current state of the country. Both brands look like they'll have permanent damage from these misunderstandings.

Tucker Carlson, David Brooks, Rupert Murdoch, And Religion

One of the explanations for Fox's sidelining of Tucker Carlson (even the actual nature of the personnel move is now up in the air) that's been making the rounds is that Tucker's invocation of religion finally got under Rupert Murdoch's skin:

[Murdoch's} management of News Corp and Fox Corp had become increasingly erratic and one of my sources described him as a “crazy old man.”

In particular, it was Tucker Carlson’s frequent invocation of religion and his own religious faith that unnerved Murdoch and left him aggrieved. On Tuesday, Vanity Fair reported that Tucker’s widely acclaimed speech at the Heritage Foundation 50th anniversary gala was a major factor in Murdoch’s sudden decision to terminate him. The speech had religious overtones, and Carlson spoke of the current political moment as being a spiritual battle of good vs. evil. . . . A source told the outlet “that stuff freaks Rupert out. He doesn’t like all the spiritual talk.”

The Vanity Fair story also mentions a dinner Carlson attended in late March with Murdoch and his then fiancée Ann Lesley Smith (Smith, 66, would have been Murdoch’s fifth wife). Tucker was allegedly Smith’s favorite host and once described him as a “messenger from God.” The two apparently discussed religion at the dinner, with Smith at one point pulling out a Bible, leaving Murdoch “freaked out.”

A week after this dinner, Murdoch called off his engagement. A month later, Fox fired Carlson.

That a 92-year0-ld multibillionaire should be freaked out by talk of religion somehow brings to mind the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, but we'll let that go. This did send me to seek out just what it was that Tucker said at the Heritage Foundation gala that so freaked the man out. The text can be found here. In fact, although he alludes to religious issues in his speech, he avoids focusing on them -- but he does give a few insights into his background:

The people remain noble and decent. So far as I can tell, I still live here. I’m never leaving. We have good people. We have terrible people in charge. And not just of our government, but of the institutions that I grew up in, the Episcopal church, my high school [presumably the exclusive private school he attended], I can just go on and on and on. They’re all run by weak people.

But in summing up, he goes specifically out of his way to avoid religion:

So, if you want to assess, and I’ll put it in non … And I’ll stop with this. I’ll put it in nonpolitical or rather non-specific theological terms, and just say, if you want to know what’s evil and what’s good, what are the characteristics of those?

And by the way, I think the Athenians would’ve agreed with this. This is not necessarily just a Christian notion, this is kind of a, I would say, widely agreed-upon understanding of good and evil. What are its products? What do these two conditions produce?

Well, I mean, good is characterized by order, calmness, tranquility, peace, whatever you want to call it, lack of conflict, cleanliness. Cleanliness is next to godliness. It’s true. It is.

I think a Roman Catholic like Bp Barron wouldn't disagree with this, and nor would an ordinary Catholic who'd paid attention in catechism class. The virtues fall into two categories, theological and natural, and the latter are prudence, temnperance, fortitude and justice -- which have also been called the Aristotelian virtues, so Carlson is completely right in saying they extend beyond Christianity into classical thought. There's nothing specifically religious about them, although if you venture into subjects like natural law, you run into the question of why these are virtues and how this whole scheme came into being.

And Carlson goes no farther in his talk than to say he was raised Episcopalian and is still married to his high school sweetheart, the daughter of an Episcopal priest. Bible thumping is not Episcopal style, but we may also infer that whatever he is now, he isn't the same sort of Episcopalian as, say, Alissa Heinerscheid, the former Bud Light marketing VP. He goes no farther in his Heritage Foundation address than to say nice things about natural law.

We don't know for sure if this was what freaked Mr Murdoch out, and at this stage, we don't even know the precise contractual nature of Mr Murdoch's revenge, except that the religious angle, however minimal, is a current and credible explanation. But I'm drawn to the context of remarks by David Brooks on the PBS News Hour on Friday of the same week Carlson was sidelined:

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that he likes President Joe Biden’s soul of America messaging because the election is a contrast “between a moral vision and an amoral realism” that is represented in the idea that “We’ve got to take care of [ourselves].”

. . . "I think Biden’s instinct is just very different, that we have to have — we have to be a good country, and we have to be good in defending democracy. We have to be good on race. We have to be good on fairness. We have to be good to the marginalized. And so, I think there is — unlike other presidential elections, there’s really a contest between a moral vision and an amoral realism. And so, I think he’s right to highlight that difference.”

Brooks's reference to the "soul of America" is to the September 1, 2022 "Dark Brandon" speech Biden gave in front of Independence Hall.

A main theme of the speech was Donald Trump and his political allies, so-called "MAGA Republicans", who Biden described as a threat to the country and democracy. He contrasted them against "mainstream Republicans" who he portrayed as less extreme. Biden expressed his support for the both the Department of Justice's and the FBI's investigation into Trump.

The Wikipedia piece quoted him as sayhing, "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." The effort here is to portray Trmp as the representative of a deviant fringe outside normal social parameters. The difficulty is in how Biden himself seeks to define the mainstream, for instance in his more recent statement in support of transgenderism:

Transgender Americans deserve to be safe and supported in every community – but today, across our country, MAGA extremists are advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families. No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.

Let me be clear: These attacks are un-American and must end. The bullying, discrimination, and political attacks that trans kids face have exacerbated our national mental health crisis.

. . . I want every member of the trans community to know that we see you. You’re each made in the image of God, and deserve love, dignity, and respect. You make America stronger, and we’re with you.

From a religious, or indeed even a scientific-materialist standpoint, surgery and hormone treatment to alter a person's sex is a chimerical fantasy. Dressing in clothing associated with the opposite sex for sexual gratification is deviant behavior. Using terminoiogy like "soul" or "image of God" in this context is dishonest. The Roman Catholic catechism (and traditional Protestant belief) says God is neither male nor female but is traditionally referred to as "He" and "the Father". Human beings are made male and female in the image of God. You don't mess with this stuff any more than you mess with the rest of natural law.

What's clearly going on right now is an attempt to rewrite natural law, which will always be vain and in many ways blasphemous, but David Brooks, the token "conservative" of state-supported media, is in favor of it, and he says this is what the next election will be about.

Nobody can predict, but the initial omens suggest that the plebs as a whole isn't buying this, either in the Bud Light fiasco or Murdoch's revenge against Tucker Carlson for freaking him out over remarks that are deliberately not even religious. I don't think David Brooks is paying attention. The two issues have brought about two major corporate crises. If this is what 2024 will be about, the initial signs aren't good for the elites.

I've Got The Same Question

In this morning's news:

Hunter Biden is livin’ large while pretending to be a poor starving artist to avoid child support. At least, that’s what the mother of his out-of-wedlock child claimed in a briefing filed in an Independence County, Arkansas court Thursday.

The story quotes Lunden Roberts's attorney Clinton Lancaster:

“What Mr. Biden has paid, or received as a contribution, for paying these elite attorneys has a definitive and quantifiable value that goes directly to his income for child support purposes,” wrote Lancaster, arguing that attorney-client privilege did not bar the payment information from discovery.

. . . If Mr. Biden can afford a Washington DC, Hollywood, Chicago biglaw, and the best domestic relations attorney on the Texas side of the Texarkana border, he surely must have income for child support purposes."

This is a question I've been asking about both Hunter and his father all along, although i'm also skeptical that any money is actually there -- I haven't been the only person to note that Hunter's various foreign deals have been mostly small potatoes, many never worked out, and his expenses for drugs, ladies, rehab, luxury hotels, cars, travel, and everything else far outweighed whatever he was bringing in. And if only ten percent was going to the big guy, then so much the less was available to Joe, who nevertheless, based on the evidence we have, was already picking up Hunter's shortfall.

In other words, something doesn't add up, not just for Hunter, but for the whole family. Even if we grant that baksheesh was coming in, being laundered, and then distributed to nine or 12 Bidens, these people are all living extravagantly, and several are addicts with expensive habits who are in and out of rehab. Even if we try to add what they're all earning from sinecures and no-show jobs at non-profits, and total that up with whatever income investigators can estimate for all the family payoffs, this simply won't sustain their collective lifestyles.

My surmise here is borne out by another story in this morning's news: Hunter Biden’s Lawyer Controls Entity with 10% Stake in Chinese State-Backed Investment Fund:

Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, controls an entity with a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, a Chinese state-backed investment fund founded just days after Hunter and President Joe Biden visited China in 2013, a source confirmed Friday to Breitbart News.

After pressure increased on Hunter Biden to divest from BHR Partners due to a conflict of interest upon Joe Biden assuming the White House, Hunter Biden’s lawyer told the New York Times in the fall of 2021 that his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly in either BHR or Skaneateles.”

Skaneateles LLC, the entity which owns ten percent of BHR Partners, according to Chinese public records from Baidu, was controlled by Hunter as the sole governor until its dissolution in September 2021, a Washington, DC, registration indicated.

But new documents obtained by Breitbart News, first revealed by nonprofit Marco Polo, show the control of Skaneateles LLC is being held by Kevin Morris, Hunter’s top attorney, who also paid Hunter’s IRS debts.

. . . The document shows Skaneateles LLC holds a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, equivalent to $3 million.

Three million? A middle-class house in much of Hollywood, where Kevin Morris lives, can be $3 million. This is small potatoes, certainly for Kevin Morris. Remember he was said to have been footing the bill for Hunter's Malibu rental to the tune of $20,000 a month and apparently paying for his lawyers and many of his other expenses as well. This is not to say that at minimum the statements he gave as to Hunter's interest in BHR Partners were untrue, but if nothing else, it bears out the observation that some have made that Hunter's business activities never brought in anything like what he needed to support his or his family's lifestyle.

What's the payoff for Kevin Morris? If it's whatever he can skim from a $3 million investment -- or anything in that range -- it simply dioesbn't justify what he's been sinking into the Hunter Biden black hole for some years now. Even a conventional set of assumptions that assumes ordinary avarice doesn't explain things here.

I think there's a problem here. The amounts of money we've seen so far in this whole case are pretty piddling as far as bribes go. Right offhand, I'd say the Pelosis have done much better just on graft. Either (a) the money just isn't there, and Hunter has been running a con; or (b) the money is there, but so far, we haven't seen where it is, or (c) the payoffs are being made in a way we don't yet understand, or (d) there's a whole other balance sheet that we're just not aware of.

This is my current puzzle. It's not too far from the questions Lunden Roberts's attorneys are asking, except that I doubt if Ms Roberts or her attorneys will ever see much money from any Biden no matter what the court does in her case.

"It's Raining Hunter Biden News"

The headline was a wweek ago in The Intelligencer, but so far, the rain just hasn't stopped. The most recent showers, though, haven't covered new developments -- instead, they've delved into details of the extended relationship among Hunter, his associates Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin, and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his wife, Evan Ryan. Much of this comes from a period around 2010 that's been documented all along on Hunter's laptop, and it turns out to be suggestive enough to lead one YouTuber to ask if Hunter was "creeping on" Blinken's wife, while another asked straight out if he was "shtooping" her (I have no opinion).

I have, though, been maintaining a detailed file of links and data points covering Hunter's career, and I've been noticing that his life before the events of 2015, which extend from his brother Beau's death to his separation and divorce from his first wife and his affairs with Beau's widow, Hallie, and her sister, is nowhere near as well-documented as the period after, even though a great deal is nevertheless available on the laptop.

But now all of a sudden, Antony Blinken enters the story in a pretty big way. Blinken, it turns out, is another longtime Biden retainer. According to Wikipedia,

He was a foreign policy advisor for Joe Biden's 2008 presidential campaign, before advising the Obama–Biden presidential transition.

From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the president and national security advisor to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm. Blinken returned to government first as a foreign policy advisor for Biden's 2020 presidential campaign, then as Biden's pick for secretary of state, a position the Senate confirmed him for on January 26, 2021.

The entry doesn't mention Blinken's position with the Penn Biden Center after the end of Biden's vice presidential term. But from the new record, we see that as of 2010, when Hunter first appears to have contacted him, Blinken was Biden's national security adviser. The most detailed account of their dealings during this period is in this Fox News piece:

It appears that Hunter first tried to connect with Blinken on June 16, 2010, when he asked Blinken's wife, current White House cabinet secretary Evan Ryan, for his non-government email address.

"Can I get Toni's non-govt email?" Hunter asked. "I want to send him something. Thanks."

Ryan, who worked at the White House at the time and later went to work at the State Department, according to her LinkedIn, then provided Blinken's personal email address to Hunter. She previously worked for Biden as his deputy campaign manager during his unsuccessful presidential run between 2007 and 2008.

So Blinken's wife, Evan Ryan, also had ties to Bidenworld. Her Wikipedia entry says she

worked in the Obama-Biden White House as assistant to the vice president and special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement from September 2013 to January 2017.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Ryan served as deputy campaign manager for then-Senator Biden's 2008 presidential campaign and also served on the Kerry 2004 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton's 2000 senatorial campaign. Ryan served in the Clinton White House, as deputy director of scheduling for First Lady Hillary Clinton and as special assistant to the first lady's chief of staff.

So she was an ambitious Democrat operative even prior to her marriage to Blinken in 2002, and it's hard not to conclude that the marriage was underaken in the context of both their political careers, especially since Blinken was an upper-crust "Episcopalian Jew", an Ivy League legacy from family wealth, while Ryan was middle-class and Catholic.

It appears that both jumped right into a fairly close business and personal rlationship with Hunter when the opportunity presented itself in 2010. The Fox News story continues,

In March 2010, Hunter Biden's longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, emailed Hunter about a couple White House events and said he "Talked to Evan," referring to Evan Ryan, about them and how many tickets the Office of the Vice President would be allotting for guests.

. . . A couple months later Hunter and Ryan exchanged emails about the Mexico State dinner guest list and she sent him the seating chart for his table.

. . . In August 2010, Ryan emailed Hunter asking if he was still in New York City, prompting Hunter to say he was at "office in TriBeCa" referring to the neighborhood in New York City and that he was taking the Acela train home that evening.

"Tony's headed this way, we are staying and having dinner w his parents. I'm so sorry I messed up w your vm, when Danielle told me she'd found a phone number for you I thought that was why you were calling," Ryan said. "We are back next week, are you guys around for dinner?" It is unclear if they met up for dinner when they returned to Washington, DC.

. . . Later that year in October, Ryan emailed Hunter and his business partner, Eric Schwerin, asking Hunter to call her when he lands, noting that she knew he was traveling.

. . . Later that month, White House visitor logs show Schwerin met with Ryan at the White House's Old Executive Office Building (OEOB).

. . . In a June 2011 email with the subject line "Party" Schwerin emails Hunter saying, "Put Evan Ryan down as a ‘yes’ for Thursday. I think Tony too." It is unclear what "party" the email was referring to.

. . . A month earlier, Schwerin emailed Hunter and Rosemont Seneca Partners assistant Anne Marie Person, asking her to "put lunch with Evan Ryan down on the schedule for Wednesday." It is unclear whether the lunch occurred or what was discussed if the lunch occurred.

. . . In July 2016, Joan Mayer, who says she was the vice president of Hunter’s now-defunct investment firm Rosemont Seneca Advisors from 2008 to 2017, emailed Schwerin and Hunter saying Ryan tried calling Hunter, but his phone went to voicemail.

By July 2016, of course, Hunter had a lot more than Even Ryan on his plate, what with Hallie, her sister Liz, the stripper Lunden Roberts, and whatever else. No wonder Evan went to voicemail. It's plain, though, that her husband Tony felt the relationship with Hunter was productive enough to meet with him at the State Department on July 22 to discuss matters related to Ukraine -- at that time, both Hunter and his associate Devon Archer served on the Burisma board. (Archer was sentenced to a year in federal prison for an unrelated fraud charge in 2022.)

What I take to the partial picture we see here is that the Blinkens, a remarkably ambitious couple, were in fact eager to ingratiate themselves with Hunter, although one would think that Antony in paricular, from a wealthy family of cosmopolitan art collectors and diplomats, would think that playing up to Hunter, a very sketchy guy with nothing like that background, would be beneath him. Instead, both he and his wife appear to have been eager to reassure Hunter that they were with the program.

It reinforces the impression that by 2020, Blinken was willing -- I would guess likely even eager -- to coordinate the letter from 51 intelligence authorities that planted the idea that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. I guess that in at least some people's minds, being Secretary of State is a big deal. My view, having spent a career at far lesser jobs, is that it's likely just a job, and on balance no more rewarding or satisfying than any other.

It looks to me, in fact, that Antony Blinken's spent a good part of his adult life kissing the Bidens' asses to get where he's gotten, when he might well have been much more productive and happier as just a rentier and philanthropist. I sense a deep insecurity there, on which the Bidens, especially Hunter, have been able to feed. And keep in mind that Hunter, for all the million-dollar kickbacks here and no-show board memberships there, was never rich -- when his first wife finally woke up and checked, she discovered they owed far more than they had, and it began to dawn on her that she'd been scammed. I'm starting to think the whole Biden family is just a big grift.

To write about Bidenworld, you need a little Henry James, a little F Scott Fitzgterald, and a lot of Jim Thompson. Why do we find Tony Blinken right in the middle of it?

Rethinking Moral Panic

Now and then in the wake of the Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney controversy, I've seen the observation that it marks the end of a moral panic. I certainly think this is true, but the odd thing is that the panic is backward. What we see in the conventional definition of moral panics is that, as in the image above, a new, seemingly threatening phenomenon arises that represents a potential undermining of prevailing social values.

Thus past moral panics have involved witches, red scares, reefer madbness, crime waves, mods and rockers, and satanists. According to Wikipedia,

[T]he concept was first developed in the United Kingdom by Stanley Cohen, who introduced the phrase moral panic in a 1967–69 PhD thesis that became the basis for his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics. . . . According to Cohen, a moral panic occurs when a "condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." To Cohen, those who start the panic after fearing a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are 'moral entrepreneurs', while those who supposedly threaten social order have been described as 'folk devils'.

I've been saying pretty much throughout the COVID episode that it's been a moral panic, with phases that have also included a "morning after", over the existence of which there appears to be less of a scholarly consensus. Nevertheless, as related to the COVID panic, there was a gradual recognition that lockdowns; social distancing; closing churches, parks, and beaches; and even masks and vaccines were not only ineffective but counterproductive in solving the problem, which had been exaggerated by moral entrepreneurs, who included media and the public health establishment, enabled by a near consensus among political leadership.

The unique feature of the COVID panic was that the traditional -- and indeed, the sociologically necessary-- feature of such panics had been the need to root out some form of deviance, which included witches, communists, gays, minorities, drug users, and the like. The deviance in COVID was much more widespread. My theory all along was that the deviants in COVID were Trump voters, who in elite quarters represented a widespread contagion that could be spread via worship services, NASCAR rallies, football games, and other mass events, which certainly included Trump rallies.

But this meant that the "deviants" in the COVID panic were something close to half the country, if you do nothing more than count the votes for Trump in the 2020 election. They weren't an easily identifiable minority that could be singled out as scapegoats. In fact, if the elites tried to single them out as "folk devils" in traditiooinal fashion, they proved capable of fighting back, as they did on January 6 -- and this episode in particular has also been represented as a genuine threat to the established order by the same elites who enabled the COVID panic, who tie it closely to the Trump phenomenon.

But as the COVID panic subsided, we got a peculiar new inversion of the standard moral panic: transsexuals, a tiny, easily identifiable group that might once have been identified as deviant, suddenly were represented by corporate media and some politicians as normative and part of the social consensus, and those who once objected to, say, drag shows in schools were characterized as "folk devils". Thus we have the demagogic politician Joe Biden issuing this statement on transgenderism:

Transgender Americans deserve to be safe and supported in every community – but today, across our country, MAGA extremists are advancing hundreds of hateful and extreme state laws that target transgender kids and their families. No one should have to be brave just to be themselves.

. . . I want every member of the trans community to know that we see you. You’re each made in the image of God, and deserve love, dignity, and respect. You make America stronger, and we’re with you.

The "image of God" turns natural law on its head: the "hateful and extreme" state laws Biden mentions are meant to prevent mutilation of preteens who are unable to grasp the implication of gender reassignment surgery or, at worst, prevent drag shows to preteen audiences. The "folk devils" who advocate such measures are, once again, close to half the population. This strikes me as something close to "gaslighting", a word that's lately come into common use to convey the idea that people who aren't crazy are bing told they actually are.

If we parse out the implications of existing moral panic scholarship, we might conclude that moral panics in one way or another do derive from human nature, and human nature isn't basically wrong to resist many forms of deviance. In fact, some moral panics contradict natural law -- such as campaigns against witches. Others, not so much -- the jury is still out on whether it was ever a good idea to minimize or eliminate panalties for marijuana.

But what we've seen until just recently were always moral panics directed against small "deviant" groups, or even groups like witches that never actually existed. Trying to stir up a moral panic against roughly half the country -- or even a clear majority, for instance of those who find transsexualism problematic -- is new and uncharted territory. It seems to come with the prevailing current notion that you can re-engineer human nature.

The incomplete information that's come in so far, though, is that it hasn't beena winning strategy.

Antony Blinken, Alissa Heinerscheid, and The Great Gatsby

I've already said, speaking of Alissa Heinerscheid, the former Bud Light marketing VP who hitched her wagon to  Dylan Mulvaney's star, that something about her reminded me of The Great Gatsby. This may have to do with the peculiar intersection of upper-crust society, the presumptive locus of stability and social confidence, with ambitious upward mobility, insecurity, and phoniness. We saw it with Ms Heinerscheid, the product of generational family wealth, Groton, Harvard, and The Episcopal Church, who nevertheless felt the need to hire a coach to tell her how to think:

As it turns out, the Bud VP has herself a “professional coach.”. . . when speaking of her professional coach, she becomes animated, shifting her posture to a straighter, higher position, indicating she holds her “handler’s” ideas in higher esteem than her own. When shifting back into expressing her own thoughts or personal experience, Heinerscheid’s body language shrinks and retreats.

Just recently, I've begun to see parallels with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose background I covered in this post from last September. If anything, Antony Blinken's background, although like Ms Heinerscheid's "Epsicopalian Jewish", is even more elevated:

Blinken was born on April 16, 1962, in Yonkers, New York, to Jewish parents, Judith (Frehm) and Donald M. Blinken, who later served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary. . . . Blinken's uncle, Alan Blinken, served as the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. His paternal grandfather, Maurice Henry Blinken, was an early backer of Israel who studied its economic viability, and his great-grandfather was Meir Blinken, a Yiddish writer.

Blinken attended Dalton School in New York City until 1971. He then moved to Paris with his mother Judith and Samuel Pisar, whom she married following her divorce from Blinken. . . . In Paris, Blinken attended École Jeannine Manuel.

Blinken attended Harvard University from 1980 to 1984, where he majored in social studies. He co-edited Harvard's daily student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, and wrote a number of articles on current affairs. After graduating from Harvard, Blinken worked as an intern for The New Republic for about a year. He earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1988 and practiced law in New York City and Paris. Blinken worked with his father to raise funds for Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in the 1988 United States presidential election.

This guy should not be beholden to anyone, right? Maybe Alissa Heinerscheid needed to hire a life coach, but Blinken, from a family of diplomats, a product of the Dalton School, a French finishing school, Harvard, and Columbia Law, should not need coaching by anyone.

But what on earth is he doing mucking about with the Bidens, a decidedly downscale bunch with mob connections? It turns out that his wife, Evan Ryan, whom he married in 2002, is a Biden retainer:

Ryan served under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs and worked in the Obama-Biden White House as assistant to the vice president and special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement from September 2013 to January 2017.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Ryan served as deputy campaign manager for then-Senator Biden's 2008 presidential campaign and also served on the Kerry 2004 presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton's 2000 senatorial campaign. Ryan served in the Clinton White House, as deputy director of scheduling for First Lady Hillary Clinton and as special assistant to the first lady's chief of staff.

Just yesterday we learned,

Emails from the infamous abandoned laptop that Blinken sought to discredit show that Hunter has ties to Blinken and his wife, Evan Ryan, dating back over a decade, having scheduled meetings with him while he was on the board of Burisma and Blinken was deputy secretary of state.

Initially scheduled for late May 2015, a first meeting was rescheduled due to Beau's death from cancer that month. On July 22, 2015:

"12:00-1:30pm- Lunch with Tony Blinken (State Department)," Hunter's schedule read. "Enter at main entrance ('Diplomatic Entrance'), 22nd & C St, NW. Proceed to receptionist area where Kenny Matthews will be waiting to escort you to Tony's office."

. . . Later that day, Blinken told Hunter in an email it was "great to see" him and "catch up."

. . . It appears that Hunter first tried to connect with Blinken on June 16, 2010, when he asked Blinken's wife, current White House cabinet secretary Evan Ryan, for his non-government email address.

"Can I get Toni's non-govt email?" Hunter asked. "I want to send him something. Thanks."

Ryan, who worked at the White House at the time and later went to work at the State Department, according to her LinkedIn, then provided Blinken's personal email address to Hunter. She previously worked for Biden as his deputy campaign manager during his unsuccessful presidential run between 2007 and 2008.

So what's emerging is that the Blinkens have not only been longtime Democrat operatfves, but they seem to have had a long-standing connection with Hunter's business operations as well -- and Hunter has never quite been on the up-and-up. Matching the July 2015 date of his State Department meeting with Blinken, Hunter at the time had just been kicked out of the house by his then-wife for an episode that appears to have involved cocaine and an overnight stay with Hallie, although at this time, Hunter was also maintaining an affair with Hallie's sister and numerous escorts. That he was coked up throughout this period goes without saying.

That November, Hunter was the recipient of the notorious three-way payment to him and other Bidens for a million and a half dollars that's still under investigation. Not only was Blinken happy to meet with this guy in his office, but he appears to have had some awareness of his foreign business dealings -- and beyond that, Blinken gives every impression that he's kissing Hunter's ass.

Dalton, French finishing school, Harvard, and Columbia Law indeed. I can't stop thinking about The Great Gatsby and how maybe as a book, it's underrated.

Why Is Hunter Living At The White House?

I've noted here several times that Hunter has been seen frequently at the White House since the middle of last year, and in fact he went with Joe and his Aunt Valerie on a very private trip to Ireland earlier this month. The latest theory is from Miranda Devine at the New York Post, who has been following Hunter closely:

Hunter Biden is believed to be hiding out at the White House while his baby mama goes on the warpath.

. . . Roberts’ legal maneuvers in Arkansas lend weight to the rumor in Washington, DC, that Hunter has been living at the White House with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, and their 3-year-old son, Beau, allegedly to avoid being served with legal papers.

Numerous sightings over the past six months lend credence to the idea, with Hunter and his family spotted trailing his father and the first lady onto Marine One for weekends away to Delaware or Camp David, or for longer vacations at the borrowed homes of billionaires.

. . . Surrounded by his father’s Secret Service detail and protected by his own agents, it is difficult for a process server to get to him.

From early last year, an elaborate swing set suitable for a toddler was spotted on the White House grounds when the president ambled back to his office from Marine One.

However, just yesterday,

An Arkansas judge ordered Hunter Biden on Monday to personally show up in court in May to address questions about his laptop, including whether financial records on it belong to him.

. . . Hunter Biden's presence at the Arkansas court could create a political headache for the White House and the Biden family. He has reportedly gone to great lengths to avoid getting served with legal papers from Roberts.

But I think if anyone is following Joe's political headaches even desultorily, Hunter's baby mama is hardly the biggest. And even leaving the baby mama aside, Hunter himself is somewhat bigger, but it's clear that the current Hunter investigations are important only insofar as they lead to Joe. Joe is his own biggest headache.

If I were able to do that kind of check, the first question I'd ask is whether Hunter is still renting the Malibu house with the associated one next door for the Secret Service detail. When I last looked at Hunter's finances a month ago, I estimated,

But adding line items like alimony, wild partying, rehab, payments to Hallie and her sister, Elizabeth Secundy, with whom he was having an affair at the same time, plus child support for his natural daughter with the stripper Lunden Roberts, it seems as though Hunter's expenses even during his peak years pretty much canceled out his earnings. But now, with his income much reduced and living under effective house arrest in his Malibu compound, he's got that rent, another child, an expensive new wife, and maybe a million dollars a month in lawyer fees. I can only think Joe is picking up all these bills[.]

As best I could determine in January,

Hunter has been living in a Malibu, CA compound in a $20,000-a-month rental. . . . Access to Hunter's residence is closely controlled by the Secret Service, so that his conditions amount to house arrest. The $20,000 monthly rent on Hunter's house is reportedly paid by Hollywood lawyer Keven Morris, who reportedly underwrites other of Hunter's living expenses. According to that link, Morris also advises Hunter on his "art" sales.

However, the art sales, while controversial, seem to be in the half-million-dollar range, which can hardly pay for Hunter's lifestyle, his alimony and child support, his wife's jet-setting, and all the attorneys. Even someone like Kevin Morris has got to have his limits. Joe also had to have been on the hook for some part of this, and the increase in legal expenses since bringing Abbe Lowell on board has got to be a strain on anyone, whomever it may be and however rich, who's paying them.

So now we hear Hunter and his family have been living in the White House since last summer. My guess is that even if Kevin Morris was paying the rent on the Malibu compound, there had to be belt tightening somewhere, and the rental is done. Not only that, but if Hunter and his family are at the White House, there's less strain on the Secret Service for the separate Hunter detail in Malibu, but beyond that, Hunter is under even closer control -- a lot harder for crack dealers and Russian pimps to do business there than even in Malibu. And a lot harder for the wife to jet-set off as well, which also saves the family budget.

So evading the baby mama's process servers is the least of the reasons for Hunter to be in the White House. But there's another question. Hunter's daughter Naomi and her husband have been living in the White House simce their wedding last year as well. This all says to me there are limits to what Joe can subsidize out of his own pocket. At least he can keep Hunter, Naomi, and their useless spouses on the public dime for a while longer.

UPDATE: Naomi and her husband had apparently noved out as of this past month.

Of course he announced for reelection. It delays his own financial reckoning, which he's doing everything he can to avoid until his executors have to handle it.