The Weekly Memo: Media Outrage Is Often Out of Touch
By now, you have probably seen coverage of the Left’s outrage concerning American Eagle’s ad campaign with actress, Sydney Sweeney.
Would you be shocked to find out that almost 90 percent of Americans aren’t offended by the American Eagle ad? Yeah, me neither.
As reported by the less-than-conservative leaning Yahoo news, the Economist and YouGov conducted a poll of thousands of U.S. adults about the controversy and found that only 12 percent of Americans find the ad to be offensive. Furthermore, the drummed-up debacle did not hurt the company’s bottom line – quite the opposite. The company’s stock soared following the ad campaign.
American Eagle’s response is a good lesson for businesses operating in post-cancel culture America. The company didn’t run for the hills and start forcing HR courses onto employees featuring the latest progressive propaganda. Instead, the company responded to the media by simply saying, “Great jeans look good on everyone.”
American Eagle’s shareholders likely benefitted more from that response than the ad itself.
The takeaway for the average American is that this story confirms what most of us already know to be true: so-called “outrage” covered by mainstream media sources generally represents views that are far from consensus. However, in previous decades, the left-wing’s grip on media outlets pushed narratives onto the American public and allowed “woke” ideals to dominate our culture. In the era of Trump and alternative media, the American people seem to regularly see through the distortions and distractions to understand what real public sentiment actually represents.