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.
Hey just because we’re cutting jobs and laying off people doesn’t mean that the economy isn’t the envy of the world. All you plebs who think otherwise just because your companies are laying off or closing warehouses that were booming in the Trump years just don’t see the big picture. Plenty of people are doing well, look at the NFL, they’re not trying to trim staff, oh wait…
While the NFL’s postseason is days away, it is layoffs, rather than playoffs, that are a principal concern within the league’s Park Avenue, Manhattan headquarters. Industry sources say that 200-plus tenured league employees across departments were emailed a voluntary buyout package Monday. When adding age and years of service, any employee with a total of 70 or above qualified for the package, sources said.
Among the benefits offered in the package: three weeks salary for every year served, plus bonuses. Employees have until late February to take the buyout, sources said. The Super Bowl is Feb. 11.
I’ll give myself the last word:
Pro tip to @SpeakerPelosi & @joenbc If you have to "get the message out to voters" that the economy is the "envy of the world" that means it's not
Based on his stated supposedly biblical positions, the Bible in Johnson’s head is a silly, vicious farrago of ignorance and bigotry, and a blueprint for Christofascist tyranny. . . . [T]he right loves to say we live in a republic not a democracy. And what they mean by that is that authoritarian disenfranchisement is awesome as long as it benefits the party of white biblical Christofascism. . . .
Do you want to read the whole thing? Probably not, but I felt obligated to throw the link in there, just so you could see that I’m not making this up. Does anyone really believe that “Christofascist tyranny” and “authoritarian disenfranchisement” (whatever that means) are eminent dangers to our country, or that Mike Johnson aspires to achieve this?
Johnson of course is the new very unexpected speaker of the house and democrats who created his speakership by voting with the 8 GOP reps who wanted to outset Speaker McCarthy are having a serious case of buyers remorse. To wit:
MAGA Mike unveiled the first piece of legislation promoted by his regime.
CBS reported, “House Republicans want to pay for emergency aid to Israel by cutting funding to the IRS, teeing up a collision with the White House and Democrat-controlled Senate over how to support a key U.S. ally.
“The House GOP released a $14.3 billion standalone measure on Monday that would pay for aid to Israel by cutting the same amount in funding that was allocated to the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act, one of President Biden’s signature pieces of legislation.”
That is what conservatives have wanted for 31 years now, going back to the Reform Party, the Gingrich Revolution, the Tea Party and Trump. $30 trillion later, we may actually get cutting-before-spending legislation.
That’s via Don Surber whose early morning piece I caught almost as soon as it was published thanks to the pain still hitting me in the gut.
That the left media would be going all in on painting the rather mild mannered speaker they despise as an existential threat to American Democracy at a time when Jewish students are being advised to hide in attics at Universities and cities like Boston and New York have folks extoling the virtues of those who kidnap, murder women and children and behead babies might seem odd when this stuff is being plastered all over the news:
To the right are screen captures from two very large protests, the top showing a demonstration of an estimated 7,000 pro-Hamas protesters taking over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York on October 28, 2023. In the video at one point you can read a sign that clearly says, “Our soldiers will not be held accountable for anything.”
The second picture is from a protest in Chicago. The demonstrators at this moment are chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, a chant that has always meant in plain language, “We will kill all the Jews in Israel because Allah said only Muslims can live there.” It is also written into the Hamas founding charter, which states unequivocally that it “owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life, and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”
That comes from a Robert Zimmerman piece linked by Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit around the time I woke screaming in pain today. Zimmerman notes these thing that one can’t help notice in the news but then provides the answer to why the left seeks to elevate Mike Johnson as a danger while ignoring the threat of mobs provoking fear and violence :
What has not been noted enough however is the political allegiances of these pro-Hamas demonstrators. While not every Democrat favors what Hamas did on October 7th, we can be very very VERY confident that practically every single one of these pro-Hamas protesters, calling for the death of every Jew in Israel and numbering in the tens of thousands, is a Democrat, and has been voting for Democrats their entire lives.
This is the base of the Democratic Party. It is why the anti-Semitic “squad” of Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) are all elected members of the Democratic Party caucus in the House of Representatives. The first two represent districts strongly controlled by Democrats, most of whom come from the local Muslim communities, while latter two come from the one-party secular cities of New York and Boston, controlled wholly by Democrats.
Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future. In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.
And if that means that Jews in the US have to live in terror for their lives, particularly in blue cities and bright blue campus’ nationwide, well so be it.
The only problem is that this isn’t something that plays well outside of the deepest of blue cities so it must be suppressed and/or ignored because the story can’t be about Democrats supporting babykillers and kidnappers. Stacy McCain again:
Readers will recall that we last paid attention to Mr. Berlatsky two weeks ago (“Noah Berlatsky, Who Seems to Be OK With Pedophiles, Sure Does Hate Republicans,” Oct. 9), when Berlatsky sought to persuade his readers that what was really newsworthy was not that Hamas terrorists had slaughtered hundreds of Israelis civilians, but rather the Republican reaction to this massacre. Notice the pattern: No matter what the actual news may be, every day is Attack Republicans Day for Noah Berlatsky.
Why do you think that is?
Stacy gives his reason why Berlatsky wants to advance this narrative, but in my mind Mr. Zimmerman’s explanation as to why Democrats want to change the subject is more persuasive. I fully believe that in just a few years we will see this from Democrats:
Or you simply an example of a “good German”, who makes believe evil isn’t happening in your name, and will later claim “you just didn’t know, you had no idea what the Nazis were really doing?”
For the left to see themselves in the light of truth might be unbearable. But for the voters of the nation to see Democrats in the light of truth, that’s unthinkable.
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