"Everything is as it should be."

                                                                                  - Benjamin Purcell Morris

 

 

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Follow me on Twitter: Michael McCaffrey @MPMActingCo

Adventures in Idiocy - Thoughts on Dylan Mulvaney, Max and Monty Python

PUTRID PANTHER PISS

Yet another front in the never-ending culture war was opened in early April of this year when Bud Light decided to hire “transgender influencer” Dylan Mulvaney to be a “spokesperson” for their shitty beer brand.

To celebrate Mulvaney’s year anniversary of his “days of girlhood” Tik Tok series – which documented the travails of his first year of “girlhood” - which miraculously included the pain of menstrual cramps (or in this case minstrel cramps) despite his not having a uterus, Bud Light put his ridiculous face on beer cans.

The reaction from Bud Light drinkers to having trans Tinkerbell Dylan Mulvaney thrust upon them was entirely predictable to everyone with half a brain in their head, which obviously excludes the decision makers at Bud Light.

The people who drink Bud Light, or used to drink Bud Light, are mostly men, mostly working class and all have bad taste. Like most men, they have no interest in Dylan Mulvaney, trans issues, or the culture war. They just want to be left alone to drink beer, hang out with buddies and watch sports while they wait to for their life to come to an end.

Bud Light used to be the beer they’d consider drinking – I don’t drink but only God knows why anyone would drink that putrid panther piss…but to each his own, but now Bud Light is definitely off the table. The reason for this is simple…men love to bust each other’s balls…and now any guy drinking Bud Light gives his buddies endless ammunition to bust his balls into oblivion.

A guy brings Bud Light to a party or orders one at the bar and he will be serenaded with a cavalcade of humorously vicious insults questioning his sexuality, his gender and the state of his genitals. You may think that is cruel or barbaric or transphobic, but no one gives a flying fuck because it is, above all else, undeniably true.

The sales for Bud Light since Mulvaney became their spokesperson prove that the brand is now toxic among its core customers. For nearly two months since this all began Bud Light sales have plummeted in comparison to last year’s weekly sales averages…consistently down between 25% and 30% a week.

And this drop in sales is not going to just disappear because the stink left on the Bud Light brand from Mulvaney’s odious presence is going to last for a long time. Once a brand becomes a punchline it is nearly impossible to reverse.

What is baffling to me is how could the suits at Bud Light be so ignorant of their target audience and so blind to cultural reality? To say this is corporate malfeasance is a massive understatement.

As for Dylan Mulvaney, he is an adult and should do as he pleases with his own body…his transgenderism is his business (literally and figuratively), I just wish he wouldn’t be so craven as exploit himself or allow himself to be exploited by corporate entities…but unfortunately it seems the mentally ill Mulvaney is more interested in attention than anything else.

Mulvaney was what we call a theatre muffin (musical theatre actor) prior to becoming an “influencer”. Disingenuous, narcissistic, hyper-performative, annoyingly flamboyant gay men like Dylan Mulvaney are a dime a dozen in the theatre world. So Mulvaney seems to have decided to distinguish himself from the glamour boy hoi polloi by dressing up like a woman and saying he was trans. How clever.

His plan has worked remarkably well, as he’s made tons of money, gotten famous and even went to the Oval Office to talk to President Biden about Women’s issues…yes…you read that right….a man went to the White House as an expert on Women’s issues. Ultimately, Mulvaney strikes me as a rather repugnant culture war creature who during his shameless drive for fame has done more to denigrate women in the past year than most any other public figure.

One can only hope that Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney and the shitheads at Anheuser-Busch all disappear and right quick because the world desperately needs none of them.

As for Bud Light, it has successfully destroyed decades of branding and is now radioactive amongst its core customers. Congratulations…there is no coming back from that.

MAX

Speaking of corporate marketing malfeasance, the geniuses over at the corporate behemoth Warner Bros. Discovery unveiled their new streaming service this week and it stands as a monument to their moronity.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns the streaming services HBO Max and Discovery +. HBO Max is of course known for its prestige TV shows, like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Succession, and for its deep library of films, which include the Harry Potter, DC Comics I.P. as well as Turner Movie Classics and a bevy of other great films.

Discovery + is known for its reality TV empire which includes all the shows from Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Travel, Investigation Discovery and CNN.

The suits at Warner Bros. Discovery, led by their brainless and toothless shark of a CEO, David Zaslav, decided to combine these two streaming services into one giant streaming service.

When naming the new streaming service, they decided to forego the well-established, prestige brand of HBO which has been arduously built over the lasty forty years. And they also decided to ignore the less prestigious but still very recognizable brand of Discovery.

Instead Zaslov and co. decided to name their big new streaming service…MAX.

The first thing that comes to mind with the name MAX is the low rent cable channel Cinemax, which is derogatorily called Skinemax because of its penchant for showing soft core porn in the wee hours of the night.

The second thing that comes to mind is MAXipad…or maybe MAXimum-security prison…or maybe for those old to remember, MAX Headroom.

HBO has become such a strong brand associated with prestige over the last 40 years that even when its shows aren’t that great, they are treated with great respect by the culture. For example, 2021’s Mare of Easttown starring Kate Winslet was shit, but the media and audiences treated it like some great work of art simply because it was on HBO.

And that’s the thing…HBO signaled prestige to both viewers AND talent…which is why great actors, writers and directors would be willing to make the jump to TV only if it was HBO.

Now with MAX…not so prestigious. Now if you’re a movie star you think twice before doing a series there because it’ll be lumped in with 90 Day Fiance and Dr. Pimple Popper.

That Warner Bros. Discovery could fuck up the naming of their gigantic streaming service this badly should be shocking…but it isn’t. Zaslav and his predecessors have been able to fuck up lots of things – like their DC films, over the years.

It should also come as no surprise that Warner Bros Discovery completely fucked up the actual Max streaming site. HBO Max was the easily best streaming service site to navigate and it wasn’t even close. It had easy to access hubs to all of the valuable sections of their library like Turner Classics, DC and Studio Ghibli which made navigation a breeze. The new Max site has idiotically eliminated that glorious convenience and replaced it with a haphazard, shit-thrown-against-the-wall incoherence that is frustrating, irritating and aggravating.

The Max site is a jumbled, muddled mess. It doesn’t even have a hub solely dedicated to the Discovery material which means, much like every other useless streaming service site, browsing is fruitless and you can’t really find anything unless you specifically type it into the search bar. Moronic. I hate it so much and I hate that the ease and perfection of HBO Max is gone.

The bottom-line is don’t be surprised if Warner Bros Discovery renames MAX (and hopefully does a full reboot and rebuild) in the next 3 years…and don’t be surprised if incompetent jackass Zaslav is out of a job…and don’t’ be surprised if the company sells off major portions of its entertainment business either.

THE LIFE OF BRIAN…AND LORETTA

And finally…three years ago this July I wrote a verbosely titled article “The Monty Python Classic 'The Life of Brian' Relentlessly Mocked Christianity Forty Years Ago, Comedy Needs to Do the Same Thing to the Church of Wokeness Today” in which I celebrated the film The Life of Brian for having transformed from being banned for blasphemy upon its release to being rated as acceptable for kids today.

I also praised the film for having masterfully mocking the old religion, Christianity, and for having the foresight to eviscerate the new religion, transgenderism, too, forty years ahead of time.

The mocking of the new woke religion occurs in a scene set in the coliseum of Jerusalem where the People’s Front of Judea meet to discuss their goals. One of the members, Stan – played by Eric Idle, declares he wants to be a woman and that it is his right as a man to have people call him Loretta.

Here is the scene which is absolutely, astonishingly brilliant from start to finish.

When Stan keeps interjecting feminine pronouns into the proposed language…he is asked by Francis why he keeps bringing up women?

Stan -  “I want to be one….I want to be a woman….from now on I want you all to call me Loretta…It’s my right as a man.”

Judith – “Why would you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Stan – “I want to have babies…It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants.”

Reg - “You can’t have babies!”

Stan - “Don’t oppress me!”

Reg - “I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”

After some hemming and hawing, Francis chimes in with a solution.

Francis (to Stan) - “We shall fight our oppressors for your right to have a baby, brother…ooops…sister, sorry.”

Reg - “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies if he can’t have babies?”

Francis – “It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”

Reg – “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

I wrote of the film and this scene that,

“The Office, Community, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and Fawlty Towers, among others, have all had episodes scrubbed from streaming services for their past politically incorrect sins. Let us pray to our Lord and Savior Brian and his Sacred Shoe and Holy Gourd, that Monty Python’s glorious canon is not next on the cancel culture crucifixion list.”

Well…just today I saw that John Cleese, one of the founding members of Monty Python, is staging a theatrical production of The Life of Brian, and he is being forced to cut the “Loretta” scene from the show.

Cleese said of the Loretta scene being cut,

So here you have something there's never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I've heard of, and now all of a sudden we can't do it because it'll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later."

Yes, Cleese and co. predicted the absurdity of transgenderism forty years before it became a state religion, and I predicted the knives of the Cancel Culture Centurions and Tiny Twitter Torquemadas coming out for the The Life of Brian three years before it happened. Prophets both of us.

As the good book says (Mark 6:4), “no prophet is without honor except in his native place, among his own kindred, relatives and in his own house.”

And that is why my prescient Monty Python article, and most everything else I’ve written, could only be widely published at a Russian media outlet RT.com, and not here in the U.S. of A. where the Truth is anathema and people only want to read things that comfort, rather than confront, their vapid, vacuous and vacant belief systems built on disinformation, misinformation, propaganda and emotionalism. It's also why my wife left me, my dog bit me and my family disowned me.

As for Bud Light, MAX and Monty Python, these stories of misjudgments and massive failures are all just symptoms of a depraved decadence brought about by the broader disease of an empire in rapid decline.

Think this is bad? Trust me…things are going to get much, much worse…just watch and see.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

The Monty Python Classic 'The Life of Brian' Relentlessly Mocked Christianity Forty Years Ago, Comedy Needs to Do the Same Thing to the Church of Wokeness Today

Estimated Reading Time: 3 Minutes 33 seconds

The woke are winning the culture war and comedy needs to step up and expose these ludicrous fools for their fanaticism before it’s too late.

The Life of Brian, Monty Python’s classic cinematic mocking of Christianity, was so scandalous for its blasphemy back when it was released in 1979, that it was actually banned by some British theatre owners, while others gave it the scarlet letter of an X-rating.

An X-rating in those days was the movie rating equivalent of being stoned to death for saying “Jehovah!”

As a sign of how dramatically the culture has shifted in the last forty years, the BBFC now rates The Life of Brian a very warm and fuzzy 12A – suitable for viewers 12 and up.

The film isn’t considered dangerous for its blasphemy anymore because Christianity doesn’t much matter anymore…and I say that as a practicing Catholic.

Christianity with its endemic corruption, devout fanatics and exuberant magical thinking has been usurped in our culture by a newly ascendant religious force even more severe in nature.

That force is wokeness, which is accompanied by its own inquisition and enforcement wing – cancel culture.

If you doubt that wokeness is the new dominant cultural religion, consider this…in most places in the U.S. you aren’t allowed to go to church because of coronavirus but are wholly encouraged to attend Black Lives Matter protests - which apparently confer some magical and mystical powers of immunity upon attendees.

Meet the new religion…same as the old religion.

Monty Python were such a brilliant comedic force they not only obliterated the old religion in The Life of Brian, but also ridiculed the new one too, forty years before it rose to power.

In the film there is a scene - which would never get made in today’s stultifying p.c. environment - that deals with transgenderism.

Set in the Coliseum of Jerusalem, the scene shows the People’s Front of Judea…not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front…comprised of Stan (Eric Idle), Reg (John Cleese), Francis (Michael Palin) and Judith (Sue Jones-Davies), meeting to discuss their goals.

When Stan keeps interjecting feminine pronouns into the proposed language…he is asked by Francis why he keeps bringing up women?

Stan -  “I want to be one….I want to be a woman….from now on I want you all to call me Loretta…It’s my right as a man.”

Judith – “Why would you want to be Loretta, Stan?

Stan – “I want to have babies…It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants.”

Reg - “You can’t have babies!”

Stan - “Don’t oppress me!”

Reg - “I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?”

After some hemming and hawing, Francis chimes in with a solution.

Francis (to Stan) - “We shall fight our oppressors for your right to have a baby, brother…ooops…sister, sorry.”

Reg - “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies if he can’t have babies?”

Francis – “It’s symbolic of our struggle against oppression!”

Reg – “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality.”

It is impossible to imagine any comedy of today having the testicular fortitude to do a scene as brutally honest and savagely insightful as that.

“Symbolic struggle against reality” is the perfect definition of wokeness and this is why we need a new Monty Python-esque group to make a film eviscerating wokeness as exquisitely and relentlessly as the The Life of Brian did Christianity…maybe call it The Life of Karen.

Wokeness, with its incessant self-righteousness, aggressive illogic, absurd preferred pronouns and ridiculously insufferable p.c. jargon, is a gloriously target rich comedy environment.

Sadly, there’s no Monty Python equivalent in our times comically capable of dismantling the new Church of Wokeness. The most prominent sketch comedy show today is Saturday Night Live, and they’re shameless, politically correct lap dogs.

In stark contrast to the ballsy comedy bravado displayed by Monty Python forty years ago, watching SNL’s impotent, flaccid, woke-approved humor is like getting a scolding from a Methodist temperance movement a hundred years ago.

SNL is so neutered by wokeness, in 2019 they actually fired comedian Shane Gillis before he ever appeared on the show because he offended the Cancel Culture Centurions and Tiny Torquemadas of Twitter…the horror!

Besides suffocating the comedy of today, the woke are actively scouring tv and film history searching for retroactive blasphemers to silence.

The Office, Community, 30 Rock, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Scrubs and Fawlty Towers, among others, have all had episodes scrubbed from streaming services for their past politically incorrect sins.

Let us pray to our Lord and Savior Brian and his Sacred Shoe and Holy Gourd, that Monty Python’s glorious canon is not next on the cancel culture crucifixion list.

By today’s woke standards they’d certainly deserve it for their insightful dismantling of transgenderism, their mockery of speech impediments in the form of ‘pwonouncements’ by Pilate and his ‘fwiend’ Biggus Dickus, and for the crime of having men play female roles!!

On the bright side”…if Monty Python does get crucified at least they’ll go out singing!

The bottom line is this…wokeness must be stopped and I believe the best way to stop it is to mock it. Sadly though, the Church of Wokeness is winning the culture war because unlike Monty Python forty years ago, today’s comedy hasn’t found the courage to tell the unvarnished, hysterical truth…and we are all worse off because of it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020