Have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up
The choice of a new generation
Internets,
The collective bitchfit about that Kendall Jenner-Pepsi ad is the least valid protest in the history of complaint, surpassing the Million Vagina March that took place the weekend after Trump’s inauguration. Everyone involved with it should be ashamed of themselves, from the people who came up with the ad to the bored hoodrats who photoshopped cans of Pepsi into pics of MLK (at night, while people who work for a living were fast asleep, natch).
The only person who could conceivably emerge from this with her dignity intact is Kendall Jenner, who not only looked adorable in the ad, but probably didn’t have anything to do with its content. She might not even know how to read. She’s been on that reality show since she was an elementary school-age kid, and I doubt she’s had much in the way of guidance, with her father walking around with his ballsack tucked between his legs and her mother busy managing her older sister’s career as a plausible deniability pr0n chick. It’s a wonder she’s turned out as well as she has.
Pepsi, when they pulled the ad, made it a point to apologize to Kendall Jenner (but not the black community), which I took to be an acknowledgement of the commercial influence of the Kardashian family more so than anything else. The soda company, which has lagged behind Coca-Cola for its entire existence–except for maybe the month that New Coke was out back in the mid ‘80s–can’t afford to have Kim K et al. switch the game up and start drinking Coke. They could fuck around and go out of business.
They’re not nearly as concerned with the commercial influence of the black community. In fact, one aspect of this controversy that Black People Twitter seems to have failed to realize is that Kendall Jenner shouldn’t have been in this ad in the first place. Pepsi ads used to feature especially shameless black musicians (e.g. Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, MC Hammer). Just because Kim has a gross tank-ass doesn’t make the Kardashian family suitable replacements. Representation matters.
There was minimal fear of a black Pepsi boycott, because it’s just not in our nature, as a community, to pool our resources for a common cause. We couldn’t even get more than a one percent turnout in the mayoral election in Ferguson that took place the same day this dumbass ad hit the Internets. The same white kid who was mayor during the Mike Brown shooting won by like 500 votes. And this was his second time being reelected since the shooting. In neighboring St. Louis City, a white law-and-order candidate beat the black woman who was running by about 800 votes.
Anyway, the ad didn’t have shit to do with Black Lives Matter. Literally, nothing about the ad suggests that it had anything to do with Black Lives Matter, other than the fact that it depicted a protest, and Black Lives Matter was a protest movement. But Black Lives Matter has been over for all “intensive purposes” since secular saint Micah X. Johnson took Maximum Emergency Compensatory Action against 5–0 down in Dallas. DeRay has long since taken a cushy HR position with the no doubt illustrious public school system in Baltimore, after not getting any more votes in the mayoral election than I would have gotten–and I’m not even from Baltimore!.
Anti-Trump protests have come to replace Black Lives Matter, and that’s obviously what this ad intended to depict. Seemingly half the ads during this year’s Super Bowl were in a similar vein. The song playing in the background of this Pepsi ad, by what’s destined to be literally the umpteenth member of the Marley family to win a Grammy for Best Reggae Album, was written in response to Trump winning the election. Since then, the Marley spawn has written a similar song with Katy Perry (who I think also works for Pepsi), which the two of them performed at this year’s Grammy’s, in front of a vaguely resistance-themed backdrop.
Even if Pepsi were to try to co-opt Black Lives Matter, they wouldn’t have been that overt about it. And regardless, they would have gotten Beyoncé involved, which would have precluded any criticism from Black People Twitter. Pepsi is dumb, but they’re not that dumb. True, they were forced to pull an ad and issue an apology, but it’s not like they lost any money. All of this outrage is just free publicity.
Take it easy on yourself,
Bol
Originally published at tinyletter.com.
