When I’m behind the wheel, no road trip is complete without a country-fried steak from Cracker Barrel, preferably served with turnip greens and fried okra.
"Democrats were supposed to represent John F. Kennedy forgoing the inaugural top hat and inspiring Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” They were supposed to channel Bill Clinton playing sax on Arsenio and bringing in Bob Dylan to perform at his inauguration. They were supposed to manifest Barack Obama declaring that there was no liberal America or conservative America, only the United States of America, before flashing that thousand-megawatt smile. Instead, too many influential Democrats chose to devolve into the party of Doug Emhoff and Ilhan Omar, of lawfare and censorship, of identitarian demagoguery and double standards, and of unyielding efforts to reduce average Americans’ standards of living."
Once you understand that Team D is but the political manifestation of the PMC consciousness, and that, as the hegemonic class, PMC values are presumed to be normative, everything makes perfect sense. (FWIW, Team R plays a similar role with regard to Local Gentry, that guy who inherited a muffler shop and parleyed his fortune into a local chain of muffler shops, a few rentals, a nice place on the lake and a Fancy Truck.)
Great article! My only minor quibble is that the legacy media was committed to "breathless stenography for Davos Man and the administrative state" long before it started wanking on about democracy dying in darkness post-Trump.
Trump needs to remove every cent of federal funding from Columbia and levy a nice fat tax on its endowment.
Modern political activism and all of its many poses and performances usually lacks one major component: skin in the game. This is why our entrepreneurial activist/journalist/academic caste can move from one moronic destructive idea after the other—open the jails, open the borders, erase the sex binary etc—and never miss a meal or have to spend a day in the pillory.
But after 10/7 Columbia stepped onto the playing field and decided it would lead the campaign against the Jewish state, protect and coddle all its enemies and lend its institutional weight and reputation to the campaign to paint Zionism as the most unacceptable -ism of all.
Now that Columbia has allied themselves with terrorist jihadists and revealed themselves to be an anti-American Jew-hating massacre-supporting Fifth Column, it needs to be treated as such.
There are quite a few extremely talented people doing excellent work at Columbia, but I must agree that multi-billion university endowments should be taxed, that federal funding structures need fundamental reform, and that all of society would benefit from upscale institutions having far more skin in the game.
I'm not sure the New Coke analogy really applies. A bunch of dumb MBAs failed to appreciate what they had in Coke. They might even have been Republicans, for all I know. It was stupidity without a political agenda.
Whereas the Democrats (and the WaPo, and the universities) got taken over by an "elite" class of people who are the least impressive elites the world's ever seen. They actively despise anyone who'd eat at Cracker Barrel or shop at WalMart, and hold luxury beliefs like "defund the police" purely to show off to each other. I don't blame that class of people for New Coke, particularly.
Albert Cory, if it is true that the Democrats, the Wash Post, and the universities have been taken over by a singularly incompetent elite, is this an instance of the Peter Principle? That is the idea that people tend to get promoted as long as they prove competent until they are promoted beyond their competence. Yet, they seldom get demoted or fired, so eventually all the positions in their institutions are held by people who have reached their level of incompetence. That would explain why our colleges provide shoddy education at exorbitant prices and congratulate each other on doing a swell job. It would explain how the Democrats lost the last election. If Biden were himself promoted beyond his level of competence, that would explain why one of his mistakes was to promote Kamala Harris beyond hers.
I'd say there's a certain commonality in terms of the decision-making suits being cluelessly disconnected from their own products. I'm not sure if Cracker Barrel execs ever eat their country-fried offerings, not sure if Coca-Cola execs drink soft drinks, etc. in the same way that professional Democrats are unlikely to have depended on social services or be in a district where defunding the police would be comprehensively disastrous.
Chiming in here to say that Pepsi's taste test was basically cherry-picking; Pepsi tastes better at first but doesn't have good staying power (absent a palate cleanser like water). Plus Coke tastes better in concert with pizza, burgers, etc. People may have just liked Coke because it was a better product, even if a relatively shallow test made it seem otherwise. Not necessarily because of their identity.
I've always been more a Dr. Pepper man myself, so I lack some of that cola context! I'd be curious if their taste tests involved the sodas completely in a vacuum or in the context of a larger meal, as you mention. I do think they spent quite a bit of money on The New Coke expecting it to conquer the market -- if you ever tried New Coke, do you remember how it compared to classic in the context of eating other foods?
Uh...truthfully I am just parroting things I read online, and am also definitely not old enough to have ever tried New Coke. I just think it's interesting and useful to point out that this strongly believed narrative may not be as clear-cut as it appears.
(I'm pretty sure the Pepsi taste tests were in a vacuum, but again, that's just based on what I heard)
Fair enough! I have some professional experience in marketing but was largely parroting what I remember studying in a class, and it's a good point that sometimes stories stick because they memorably convey a certain dynamic rather than all the details lining up perfectly. My understanding is that the New Coke lingered as an alternative product for a number of years, but it was gone by the time my consciousness came into focus. I do remember Crystal Pepsi, though.
The Exile's general question is how an institution can change its product or service enough to attract new customers without changing it so much as to lose the current customers. There are few examples, like the Catholic Church's switch to Mass in the vernacular and the brewers' successful introduction of light beers. All the other examples I know were failures, like the self-destruction of the Boy Scouts of America, the failure of liberal AM talk shows to compete with conservative ones, and the Treasury's attempts to circulate dollar coins. Can commenters here offer some successful examples?
There are entertainers who've pulled it off throughout the course of their careers. Bob Seger is thought of now as the dusky blue collar Midwestern answer to Springsteen, but that was a persona he only gradually took on throughout his varied career.
When it comes to business, some slow evolution is possible if it doesn't seem to violate the spirit of the brand. MSNBC started as a straight-ahead news channel and only with Keith Olbermann amid the Iraq war did it become the angry liberal answer to Fox News. Now, they probably did lose quite a few of their former viewers but gained so many more it didn't matter. CNN still has some wriggle room to inch back toward the center without violating its basic premise as a brand, but I don't know what MSNBC can do that wouldn't make their ratings worse. They are in a very tough spot.
The Democrats elected a new Chairman last week, Ken Martin. According to Martin, "The majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites. It’s a damning indictment on our party brand." His solution will be "a massive narrative and branding project to reestablish who we are in the eyes of American voters."
But, how did that "damning indictment of our party brand" come about? How did they lose to so unattractive a character as Donald Trump--twice? Wasn't it their failure to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? If so, no "narrative and branding project", no image-building, can solve what is ultimately a performance problem.
I think of George as the Sinatra of country, and he was still recording great stuff right until the end! "A Good Year for the Roses" is one stone-cold classic among many, including his many incredible duets with Tammy Wynette.
"Democrats were supposed to represent John F. Kennedy forgoing the inaugural top hat and inspiring Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” They were supposed to channel Bill Clinton playing sax on Arsenio and bringing in Bob Dylan to perform at his inauguration. They were supposed to manifest Barack Obama declaring that there was no liberal America or conservative America, only the United States of America, before flashing that thousand-megawatt smile. Instead, too many influential Democrats chose to devolve into the party of Doug Emhoff and Ilhan Omar, of lawfare and censorship, of identitarian demagoguery and double standards, and of unyielding efforts to reduce average Americans’ standards of living."
Once you understand that Team D is but the political manifestation of the PMC consciousness, and that, as the hegemonic class, PMC values are presumed to be normative, everything makes perfect sense. (FWIW, Team R plays a similar role with regard to Local Gentry, that guy who inherited a muffler shop and parleyed his fortune into a local chain of muffler shops, a few rentals, a nice place on the lake and a Fancy Truck.)
The two largest factions of elites seem to be fuedalists and technocrats.
In this case, the main difference between the PMC and Local Gentry is their respective relationships with the means of production.
Great article! My only minor quibble is that the legacy media was committed to "breathless stenography for Davos Man and the administrative state" long before it started wanking on about democracy dying in darkness post-Trump.
You may have a point!
Trump needs to remove every cent of federal funding from Columbia and levy a nice fat tax on its endowment.
Modern political activism and all of its many poses and performances usually lacks one major component: skin in the game. This is why our entrepreneurial activist/journalist/academic caste can move from one moronic destructive idea after the other—open the jails, open the borders, erase the sex binary etc—and never miss a meal or have to spend a day in the pillory.
But after 10/7 Columbia stepped onto the playing field and decided it would lead the campaign against the Jewish state, protect and coddle all its enemies and lend its institutional weight and reputation to the campaign to paint Zionism as the most unacceptable -ism of all.
Now that Columbia has allied themselves with terrorist jihadists and revealed themselves to be an anti-American Jew-hating massacre-supporting Fifth Column, it needs to be treated as such.
Actions have consequences!
There are quite a few extremely talented people doing excellent work at Columbia, but I must agree that multi-billion university endowments should be taxed, that federal funding structures need fundamental reform, and that all of society would benefit from upscale institutions having far more skin in the game.
I'm not sure the New Coke analogy really applies. A bunch of dumb MBAs failed to appreciate what they had in Coke. They might even have been Republicans, for all I know. It was stupidity without a political agenda.
Whereas the Democrats (and the WaPo, and the universities) got taken over by an "elite" class of people who are the least impressive elites the world's ever seen. They actively despise anyone who'd eat at Cracker Barrel or shop at WalMart, and hold luxury beliefs like "defund the police" purely to show off to each other. I don't blame that class of people for New Coke, particularly.
Albert Cory, if it is true that the Democrats, the Wash Post, and the universities have been taken over by a singularly incompetent elite, is this an instance of the Peter Principle? That is the idea that people tend to get promoted as long as they prove competent until they are promoted beyond their competence. Yet, they seldom get demoted or fired, so eventually all the positions in their institutions are held by people who have reached their level of incompetence. That would explain why our colleges provide shoddy education at exorbitant prices and congratulate each other on doing a swell job. It would explain how the Democrats lost the last election. If Biden were himself promoted beyond his level of competence, that would explain why one of his mistakes was to promote Kamala Harris beyond hers.
I saw a meme, which went like this:
Obama: I need a VP who is dumber than I am
Biden: I need a VP who is dumber than I am
Harris: I need a VP candidate who is dumber than I am
I'd say there's a certain commonality in terms of the decision-making suits being cluelessly disconnected from their own products. I'm not sure if Cracker Barrel execs ever eat their country-fried offerings, not sure if Coca-Cola execs drink soft drinks, etc. in the same way that professional Democrats are unlikely to have depended on social services or be in a district where defunding the police would be comprehensively disastrous.
Chiming in here to say that Pepsi's taste test was basically cherry-picking; Pepsi tastes better at first but doesn't have good staying power (absent a palate cleanser like water). Plus Coke tastes better in concert with pizza, burgers, etc. People may have just liked Coke because it was a better product, even if a relatively shallow test made it seem otherwise. Not necessarily because of their identity.
I've always been more a Dr. Pepper man myself, so I lack some of that cola context! I'd be curious if their taste tests involved the sodas completely in a vacuum or in the context of a larger meal, as you mention. I do think they spent quite a bit of money on The New Coke expecting it to conquer the market -- if you ever tried New Coke, do you remember how it compared to classic in the context of eating other foods?
Uh...truthfully I am just parroting things I read online, and am also definitely not old enough to have ever tried New Coke. I just think it's interesting and useful to point out that this strongly believed narrative may not be as clear-cut as it appears.
(I'm pretty sure the Pepsi taste tests were in a vacuum, but again, that's just based on what I heard)
Fair enough! I have some professional experience in marketing but was largely parroting what I remember studying in a class, and it's a good point that sometimes stories stick because they memorably convey a certain dynamic rather than all the details lining up perfectly. My understanding is that the New Coke lingered as an alternative product for a number of years, but it was gone by the time my consciousness came into focus. I do remember Crystal Pepsi, though.
The Exile's general question is how an institution can change its product or service enough to attract new customers without changing it so much as to lose the current customers. There are few examples, like the Catholic Church's switch to Mass in the vernacular and the brewers' successful introduction of light beers. All the other examples I know were failures, like the self-destruction of the Boy Scouts of America, the failure of liberal AM talk shows to compete with conservative ones, and the Treasury's attempts to circulate dollar coins. Can commenters here offer some successful examples?
There are entertainers who've pulled it off throughout the course of their careers. Bob Seger is thought of now as the dusky blue collar Midwestern answer to Springsteen, but that was a persona he only gradually took on throughout his varied career.
When it comes to business, some slow evolution is possible if it doesn't seem to violate the spirit of the brand. MSNBC started as a straight-ahead news channel and only with Keith Olbermann amid the Iraq war did it become the angry liberal answer to Fox News. Now, they probably did lose quite a few of their former viewers but gained so many more it didn't matter. CNN still has some wriggle room to inch back toward the center without violating its basic premise as a brand, but I don't know what MSNBC can do that wouldn't make their ratings worse. They are in a very tough spot.
The Democrats elected a new Chairman last week, Ken Martin. According to Martin, "The majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites. It’s a damning indictment on our party brand." His solution will be "a massive narrative and branding project to reestablish who we are in the eyes of American voters."
But, how did that "damning indictment of our party brand" come about? How did they lose to so unattractive a character as Donald Trump--twice? Wasn't it their failure to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? If so, no "narrative and branding project", no image-building, can solve what is ultimately a performance problem.
You can get a soda called "Ale-8-one" at Cracker Barrel. It's the most famous export of my hometown. You're welcome.
I've tried some of the vintage candies but haven't looked at the sodas...
George Jones is my go to country singer. “He stopped loving her today” is the best country song ever. Still makes me tear up.
I think of George as the Sinatra of country, and he was still recording great stuff right until the end! "A Good Year for the Roses" is one stone-cold classic among many, including his many incredible duets with Tammy Wynette.