Detective Gregory: Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?
Sherlock Holmes: To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
Detective Gregory: The dog did nothing in the night-time.
Sherlock Holmes:That was the curious incident.
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventure of Silverblaze 1896
At Instapundit there is a link to a pair of stories about the Nellie Bowles book about how the New York times decided to ignore reality in their reporting. This part really jumped out at me:
First, it was blunting my reporting. It was saying you can’t report on the most interesting stories of the day, which was really frustrating and crazy-making a little bit because it was like, “What do you mean we’re not supposed to cover the riots? What do you mean we’re not supposed to talk about” … you name it, hot-button issue of the day. And basically there was a media blackout for a while.
I call it now time wandering, which is all of the most interesting issues. You’re allowed to talk about it in the world of all the Substacks, the conservative media covers it, and the liberal media waits about two or three years and then they’re allowed to touch it.
Cracker Barrel’s stock has taken a beating since the restaurant chain held an investor call in which its new CEO admitted the Southern country restaurant chain isn’t as “relevant” as it once was.
Julie Felss Masino, who became Cracker Barrel’s CEO nine months ago, told investors during the May 16 call that the 54-year-old eatery “was not delivering the financial results that shareholders deserve.”
“Cracker Barrel is a great concept and a great company,” Masino said. “… But to ignite growth, we must revitalize the brand.”
Before Masino and Cracker Barrel’s leadership held the meeting, the company’s stock hovered around $60 per share, but a day after the call, it dropped almost 20%, to about $48 per share, according to NASDAQ.
The stock closed Thursday at $45.75 per share.
Now why would a CEO saying the chain isn’t “relevant” cause the stock to drop 20%?
Well, maybe it’s because it means the CEO is not addressing the reason why the stock had dropped TO $60 a share from the $102 it was at a year ago. To find the answer to that question you have to ignore the USA story and search instead at Ace of Spades HQ:
In June of 2023 Cracker Barrel went woke, deciding that it could bring in new customers and investors by sexualizing the front porch with rainbow-striped rocking chairs. As it turned out, that was not a good marketing strategy, and it had the effect of repulsing existing customers who don’t want country cooking to be sexualized, be it gay, straight, or otherwise.
Image via Ace of Spades HQ
The fallout was immediate, with consumers announcing boycotts and the stock price taking an initial hit. Despite a lack of headlines or buzz since then, the boycott has continued and has been devastating to Cracker Barrel. The restaurant chain permanently ran off a great many loyal customers, and the persistently “unexpected” decline in traffic is taking a serious financial toll on the company.
It was just announced this week that Cracker barrel is slashing its dividend by 81%. Cracker Barrel stock has fallen from $102 per share at the start of “Pride Month” 2023 to $49 per share now, a 52% decline.
Now one might think that this would be an important part of the story of the drop in Cracker Barrel’s share price. Particularly when there were stories as far back as September that this was a “marketing” issue:
In a rare downbeat financial accounting, Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores acknowledged that its marketing and media efforts likely worsened a traffic drop-off during the quarter ended July 28.
We had expected the traffic would improve in June and July with the onset of the summer travel season,” said [CEO] Cochran. “Unfortunately, this didn’t materialize, and our restaurants and retail sales performance came in below our expectations.
Note that a “downbeat financial accounting” was “rare” for Cracker Barrel until they went work, but even in that story they pointed to “marketing” rather then going all in on the gay agenda. Of course Don Surber didn’t shy from the actual cause of the Cracker Barrel crack-up
On Friday, USA Today reported, “Cracker Barrel stock plummets after CEO says chain isn’t as relevant, must revitalize.”
It turns out, the rainbow people don’t like rocking chairs. Maybe Cracker Barrel can become relative by offering Bud Light and holding Drag Queen Sleepovers for children.
Of course the rainbow folks don’t like Cracker Barrell, in fact back in the days when Pintastic NE was in Sturbridge my son and I would go for breakfast at Cracker Barrell at least once during the event we would play a game which I called the “woke offense game” where pretended to be woke leftists and too turns pointed to items on the wall and explained why we were offended by them. The last person who couldn’t find something to be offended by lost. Usually we could not reach that point by the time breakfast was over.
This is all a question of people not knowing who their customer base is. Buck Throckmorton has a solution:
the first thing Cracker Barrel needs to do is apologize for insulting its loyal customers by sexualizing the restaurant and for effectively smearing its loyal customers as being “unwelcoming” people.
If it doesn’t, Cracker Barrel might as well go full woke. Perhaps it could hire Dylan Mulvaney away from Bud Light and have him cross-dress in Daisy Dukes while drinking an old-time pop from a rainbow-colored rocking chair. Alissa Heinersheid has experience using for Mr. Mulvaney for such promotions, and I believe she is available. Or maybe Cracker Barrel could run a Gillette-style ad accusing its legacy customers of being loathsome bigots and sexual predators.
June is only a week away and we will find out if Cracker Barrell’s new CEO is interested in serving the shareholders or serving the agenda. She can
Take Buck’s advice, apologize for last year and promise customers their only agenda will be good food served in a country motif. (Plan A)
Say nothing but make it a point not to go near the June “pride” agenda and hope the offended customers notice they decided to give it a miss this year (Plan B)
Decide to go all in on the rainbow agenda let the gay flag & rockers fly and damn the stock price! (Plan C)
Whatever the choice and result is we can be sure that the MSM in general and USA Today in particular will not report on the actually cause of the initial fall of Cracker Barrel, after all, it might discourage others from falling into line.
One of the things that tend to irritate me is when people say something so obviously contrary to reality and expect me to play along. These tweets are a great example.
I'd say it's because all those corporations existed during the Trump era and those price increases didn't happen
Yup Donald Trump slaughtered them all and put them all in a mass grave but on January 21st 2021 like John Cleese’s Character that was turned into a Newt they all got better.
I had a Lesbian co-worker years ago who was convinced that Donald Trump would put her in a concentration camp if he was elected and the lack of being put in the concentration camp during the Trump years never convinced her otherwise.
As you can see fame is not a cure for this inability to see reality
Seriously? Cleese is trying to sell Trump as mentally impaired when he’s running against Biden? Cripes even Bill Mahar won’t play that game.
But even with all I’ve seen the most incredible bit of BS I’ve seen pushed at me was this:
Because I do the shopping in the house and have for years and that very day I went to the soda aisle and for the first time ever saw 2 liter bottles of soda offered at 2 for $5. I grabbed a cheaper brand and went to the frozen food aisle figuring to buy some Michelina’s frozen Penne & pasta meals & maybe a fettucine alfredo as they are a cheap alternative for lunch. They’re normally a buck each but I had seen them as high as a buck and a quarter lately.
They were $1.50 each A 50% increase over the Trump years and remember these are the bottom of the line in terms of price (not in quality however they are rather tasty).
So imagine what went through my mind when I saw this:
Why on earth is this stuff effective to some? The answer comes from human nature.
People hate to admit they were wrong, to notice the crashing economy, the rampant antisemitism, our rejection around the world, the abandonment of our allies, the massive amount of illegal immigration, the emptying of our strategic petroleum reserve all of the layoffs nationally and of course the President’s inability to walk or talk or complete a speech without a long list of corrections coming out from the White House is to concede that perhaps they were wrong for either their support for Joe Biden or the opposition to Donald Trump or both.
And to make that admission is more than they can bear.
My Pastor at St. Bernard’s Parish at St. Camillus church often talks about seeing yourself in the light of truth and that part of reason why so many choose hell is they give the choice of seeing themselves in the light of truth and accepting mercy and denying that truth for all the sufferings of hell they find all the torments of the damned preferable to the uncomfortable truths about themselves.
The truth about Joe Biden in general and the party they have adopted not as a means to a political end but as their religion is too much for them to bear.
Yesterday I went to lunch with my two older brothers. The oldest of us is 74 the middle turns 70 this December and I’m bringing up the rear at 61. We are all very different but we have one big thing in common, one marriage very long. I’ve been married 36, the middle one 39 years and my oldest 54 years. That’s a combined 129 years of being married without a divorce.
I’ve failed at a lot of things in life, but marriage is something all three of us have aced.
Of the three of us my oldest brother is the best in managing money and avoiding debt. In fact he said he had done so well lately he insisted on paying for lunch only asking for a fiver to make the tip come out right. He’s not what anyone would call “rich” but he’s doing OK and his children, grandchildren are pretty much set. He was once been asked what was the secret of his ability to make smart financial decisions and avoiding debts.
His answer, getting married at the age of 20 and having a daughter at 21 forced him to be prudent with his cash and make good decisions to keep his family going.
So many people run away from responsibility at 19 and 20 saying they have their whole life ahead of them but the reality is that if you run toward responsibility when you are young you won’t end up living with your parents with a bunch of college debt and no prospect to have a house.
It’s ironic because that’s the trajectory of George “Georgie” Cooper in Young Sheldon. He ends up getting married before 20, having a child before twenty and having to, while raising his own family help keep things together for his mother and sister with his fathers sudden death and eventually grows up to be, as the older Sheldon describes him “A loser who sells more tires than anyone in Texas”.
My brother never got rich but he also only had the one marriage, advantage Tony.
One of the reasons why neither of my brothers are rich is that both while civil servants who worked for the state for decades were incorruptible. Both had plenty of opportunities for graft if they had chosen to take them and had temptation put out in front of them in terms of money and women etc but turned it down.
They were wise enough to recognize these temptations as traps because once you cross that line those who know you did or find out you did own you. I suspect this drives a lot of the corruption in both the state and federal governments , people crossing the line, people who want favors using that to gain more favors. That’s how a Joe Biden and a Nancy Pelosi become multi millionaires on a member of congress’ salary.
I also suspect this is why Joe Biden and the left is so determined to crush the middle class out of existence. A person who is content with a middle class life isn’t owned by others and can’t be easily manipulated.
I arrived second for our lunch yesterday and found one of my brothers sitting outside in the beautiful day for us and sat with him. I had just had a VERY annoying experience in solving a problem that shouldn’t have existed that had put me off and relished the chance to vent about it to my brother outside of other people’s hearing. It was just what I needed at the time.
One of the hardest things about being the generation whose turn it is to die is you start to run out of people to vent to. You don’t have parents or elders for advice because you’re the elder and the number of people who you’ve known all your life decreases with age as people start dropping dead.
I suspect I won’t have both of my brothers for more than a few years at most. So I plan on taking advantage of this and having regular bi-monthly lunches with them while we still can.
My youngest son realizes this dynamic as well. He walked over to the house after his work yesterday and we spent a hour chatting and then hitting the local 99’s to watch the Bruins be eliminated from the playoffs on a late goal with under 2 minutes (their specialty) It was two hours of talk, chat and company and I found myself talking to him about the times my dad would drive me to the nearest comic book store in Harvard Square which was 60 miles away (this was in the 70’s when such stores were rare) those were good times. My youngest is a lot like my father, gregarious, cooks up a storm and seems to be loved by everyone around him and he seems to recognize the value of this time we get together while it’s still in play.
That’s wisdom.
One of the few really bright points about the cuts and work and my current shift. My best mass window is the 6 PM mass right after work on Sunday which happens to be the mass my sons attend together weekly. So I am spoiled in terms of time with them lately. Of course at the end of a 10 hour day that starts a 5:17 AM I’m not up for much
Today however I have off, alas my wife will be working but both sons are free so we’ll be heading up to Manchester on a road trip to the Tycoon Arcade (we talked about them during my Pintastic ne 2024 coverage)
While my youngest is into the pinball scene my oldest oldest isn’t a big arcade guy but again it’s the time together that is of value. Last weekend DaWife and I went with him to help setup at a New Hampshire Renaissance Fair where he was volunteering to spend time with a friend. The time together was of great value and as he grows closer to a decision on a vocation within the church these times together become of even more value because if that what he is called to such times will likely cease to exist.
That’s also one of the advantages of not actually having a machine, it gives an excuse to do something and makes such a trip more enjoyable. Because when it comes down to it no matter what you have, whether it’s pinball machines or games or anything else it’s pretty much stuff and how much of the stuff you have do you really use on a regular basis? One of the best parts of getting older is the realization that stuff does not bring happiness. It can be the basis for a pleasant memory but it’s the memory, not the stuff that produces the smile.
I made some pleasant memories with my brothers yesterday. I’ll make some pleasant memories with my sons today. Take my advice and if your day is free or if you have a free day coming up, use it to make pleasant memories with people you like while they are available. It will pay a higher dividend than any of the stuff you aquire.
If you only have a minute and you want to know, in a nutshell, what the Netflix adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel from 1998, A Man in Full, is all about, here it is: The lead character, Atlanta businessman Charlie Croker, is Donald Trump–orange hair and all. Then throw in elements of the George Floyd and Rodney King stories and add an even more shocking ending than the one in Boogie Nights.
Earlier this month, Netflix started streaming the six-episode series, which stars Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane.
Wolfe, who is my favorite writer, after a two-decade career in journalism, made a smooth transition into fiction with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. It encapsulates the boom years of 1980s–along with the mayhem of pre-Rudy Giuliani New York City. Three years later, the film version was released. It is godawful, starting with the miscasting of Tom Hanks in the lead role as “the Master of the Universe,” Sylvester McCoy. After I suffered through the movie, I said to myself, Vanities is a mini-series not a two-hour movie.
I had hopes, misguided ones it turns out, that A Man in Full would be better, because it is a mini-series. Adding to my anticipation was Netflix streaming last year the insightful documentary, Radical Wolfe.
As A Man in Full begins, Charlie Croker (Daniels) is celebrating his 60th birthday at a party with Shania Twain entertaining his friends, family, and business associates. Two of those guests are executives from PlannersBanc, his principal lender, Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey) and Harry Zale (Bill Camp). While it appears that Croker is an Atlanta version of a Master of the Universe, he’s broke–Charlie owes PlannersBanc $600 million. He’s overextended with other lenders too. Peepgrass and Zale want to carve up Croker’s empire, starting with his quail hunting plantation and his corporate jet. A rescue is offered by the mayor of Atlanta, Wes Jordan (William Jackson Harper), who is campaigning for reelection, and Croker’s attorney, Roger White (Aml Ameen). But to save his neck, Croker will have to betray his former Georgia Tech football teammate, Norman Bagovitch (John Lacy), who is running against Jordan.
Bagovitch–wait for it–decries the status of the white male in his campaign. Jordan is Black.
David E. Kelley wrote the script, and he should be ashamed. No serious candidate for public office would campaign on such bigoted idiocy. And in Atlanta?!? Why does Kelley insult his audience?
Oh yeah, he wants to demonize Trump. Orange Croker Bad. Oops, I mean Orange Man Bad.
Joyce Newman (Lucy Liu) is an alleged victim of a sexual assault from Bagovitch. In the book, well, let’s just say there is fear of a race riot because of the racial angle of that alleged rape.
Wolfe, brilliantly in my opinion, centered much of his plot on racial contrast and conflict, but also on Croker being an anachronism. The series is set in 2024, but events in the book take place a quarter of a century earlier. Croker, nicknamed the 60 Minute Man because he starred on offense and defense for Georgia Tech, played a lead role for a national championship Yellowjackets team, at a time when major college sports teams in the South were not integrated. Croker came of age just as the civil rights protests were picking up steam, and when Jim Crow laws were still in force in Georgia and other southern states. The world changed, but Croker, not so much. Sure, of course Croker in the novel knew blacks had equal rights, but they still belonged– and I’m not endorsing his sentiment–“in their place.”
Kelley, and the directors, eliminates that angle by turning Croker into Trump. He even does away with Charlie’s redemption in Wolfe’s novel.
There’s even a climate change dig included in the series. I mean, why not?
As Croker, Daniels, who is usually very good, is an embarrassment, beginning with his overwrought Foghorn Leghorn southern accent and his Trump-sized abdominal paunch. On the other hand, Diane Lane, as Charlie’s first wife, shines. I had the pleasure of seeing her at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth a decade ago.
Wolfe’s novel is over 700 pages long, so it’s understandable that some storylines are condensed.
For instance, Conrad Hensley in the book is the child of worthless white hippies who, in spite of them, still manages to develop a strong moral compass. He works for Croker Foods in the East Bay area of California Hensley’s life, like Charlie’s, collapses. He ends up on the wrong side of the law after he violently tries to retrieve his towed car. By the way, anyone who has had his car towed and is forced to pay usurious fees to retrieve it, will sympathize with Hensley. In the series Hensley (Jan Michael Hill) is Black, and well, I already mentioned Rodney King and George Floyd.
The subplot with Peepgrass and Martha Croker remains, with the Boogie Nights twist added. If you crave more details on that, click on this Daily Mail link.
Oh, the Crokers’ son, Wally (Evan Roe), sure looks a lot like Barron Trump in the series.
Astonishingly, Trump-hating Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis doesn’t appear here. Maybe she was on a cruise with Nathan Wade during filming.
I guess I needed to suffer for some forgotten sins, because I endured all six episodes of A Man in Full. Of the other Netflix series that I punished myself with, in full, only The Pentaverate and Vikings: Valhalla were worse.
On the flipside, the cinematography for A Man in Full is sharp–Atlanta never looked so good. The soundtrack, compiled by Craig DeLeon, is spectacular, it’s as splendid as the best work of T-Bone Burnett. Keep an eye on DeLeon.
Wolfe, who died in 2018, didn’t like The Bonfire of the Vanities film. I don’t think he’d care for the series based on A Man in Full either.
I hated it.
A Man in Full is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for violence, foul language, sex, and nudity.
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