Casper newspaper ad, May 13, 1924.
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
There was of course headline news this day in 1924:
But it's the clothing ad that drew my attention:
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the Treaty of Lausanne. British, French, and Italian troops were withdrawing from Istanbul in accordance with the treaty.
Germany announced that it was introducing heavy taxation in order to address the country's economic woes.
Trotsky persuaded the Politburo, in a secret meeting, to finance the German Communist Party, the KDP, in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic. A revolution in October was the goal, which planned for a Communist Germany to develop the agricultural Soviet Union, demonstrating how Communism, at the end of the day, always has an industrialized corporatism view of things, posters of smiling buxom peasant girls aside.
Bluebeard's 8th Wife was released.
Is there a reason to take Ted Cruz seriously?
This all stems apparently from the Dylan Mulvaney episode, and now Cruz is asserting that the brewer was marking to minors.
There are a lot of serious things going on right now, and this isn't one of them. Anheuser-Busch ought to just tell Ted to shove it where the sun doesn't shine, and he ought to get to work.
Earlier this week, we noted this:
On this date, the advertisement actually ran. I've always thought that it ran in the form set out above, but there were multiple versions, and it would appear that in actuality, the version below is the one that ran.
It's similiar.
But I like the one set out at the very top better.
Sculptor Guzon Borglum began carving the Stone Mountain Memorial bas-relief. He'd work on the Confederate memorial until 1925, and then abandon the project, blasting his carving of Robert E. Lee off the mountain. None of his work at Stone Mountain remains.
Harding stopped in Hutchinson, Kansas.
And that's because it's honest, and manly, work.
It was Bates v. State Bar of Arizona in which the United States Supreme Court destroyed the professionalism of the legal profession. In that 5 to 4 decision, the Court found that a rule of the Arizona State Bar preventing advertising violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It further held that allowing attorneys to advertise would not harm the legal profession or the administration of justice.
They were wrong.
As was often the case in that era, the majority had its head up its butt. In reality, advertising destroyed decades of work by the early 20th Century American Bar Association and drug the occupation of being a lawyer from that of a learned profession down to a carnival barker.
Recently I watched the Netflix uploaded episodes of the Korean television series The Extraordinary Attorney Woo (이상한 변호사 우영우). In it, every one addressed attorneys by their patronymic and the title "Attorney", even if they were personally familiar with them. So, for example, every time somebody addressed the central protagonist, they did so as "Attorney Woo". That struck me as odd, so I looked it up to see if that was correct, and found a Korean language site entry that stated off with a comment that was something like "unlike the United States, attorneys in Korea are a respected profession".
That struck me, as I hadn't really thought about it like that. When I started off in this line of work, we were still somewhat regarded as respected professionals and its hard to forget that's now in the past.
The decline was in, however, already by that time. When we were admitted to the bar, Federal Judge Court Brimmer gave a speech about civility in litigation. I've heard versions of it many times since. When I first started practicing, advertising was just starting here, and it was the domain of plaintiff's lawyers for the most part. It still is.
Bates got us rolling in this direction, but the flood of 60s and 70s vintage law school graduates did as well. Too many lawyers with too little to do, expanded what could be done in court. Lawyers have backed every bad cause imaginable in the name of social justice. That's drug the profession down.
I think we know that, which is why I think we also go out of our way to associate ourselves with occupations that have real worth. We like conventions featuring the West, both for defense and plaintiffs, rather than sitting in front of our computers in office buildings in Denver and Salt Lake City.
Nobody, that is, wants to go to the "2023 Sitting On Your Ass Asking Insurance Carriers For Money" conference. No, we do not. We want to go instead to the "2023 Blazing Saddles and High Noon Conference".
But what are we really?
It's a real red meat question, but it needs to be asked. To some extent, civil litigation started off as a substitute for private warfare. But now? Many people have asked if this is a virtuous profession, but beyond that is it, well, manly?
Many lawyers aren't men, of course. But if there are occupations that exhibit male virtues and natures, is this one?
Our constant association of ourselves with occupations that do, and the use of language borrowed from fields that are, suggests we don't think so.
Hitler extended the Enabling Act of 1933, the organic act of his dictatorship, indefinitely, not even bothering to cal the Reichstag into session to do it.
300 large U.S. libraries flew their flags at half-mast on the same day to mark the book burnings that had occurred in Nazi Germany.
On the same day, he approved the plans for Operation Citadel, a giant planned attack on the Kursk Citadel, while, at the same time, as Sarah Sundin notes, Axis efforts were collapsing in North Africa:
Today in World War II History—May 10, 1943: 80 Years Ago—May 10, 1943: In Tunisia, British First Army takes Hammamet, cutting off Cap Bon Peninsula.
Time magazine issued one of its classic covers of World War Two, depicting a stone faced German Admiral Doenitz as a periscope, accompanied by other periscopes depicted as snake heads.
In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion. Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish. It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.
Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon. I haven't seen the play and don't care to. I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion. Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective. The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part. It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean. I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group. None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke. From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.
My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith. In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.
That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.
But I digress.
Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does. She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television. Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood. It's really creepy.
For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.
Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers. I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.
Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it. Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.
I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer. If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.
Here the decision was blisteringly odd. Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion? The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?
I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.
Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.
Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.
Anyhow, just buy local. If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.
And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer. It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause. I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season. The brots I bought were from a local butcher.
There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?
What does grandma have against cats?
A JOINT DECLARATION BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, BELGIUM, CANADA, COSTA RICA, CUBA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, DOMICAN REPUBLIC, EL SALVADOR, GREECE, GUATELMALA, HAITI, HONDURAS, INDIA, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PANAMA, POLAND, SOUTH AFRICA, YUGOSLAVIA
The Governments signatory hereto,
Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Great Britain dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter,
Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world,
Declare:
(1) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war.
(2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies.
The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism.
As a note, as I added down below on the thread on May 21, 1921, I don't like Wonder Bread. But I do like white bread and I'm truly not keen on whole grain bread.
My mother was. She'd buy really grainy breads and then slather slices of it with peanut butter. Ick.
Anyhow, a scholarly article by a scholar packed with densely (which any bread my mother baked also was. . . i.e., dense) with information, such as this:
For most of history, after the shift to agriculture, a large proportion of the world’s population depended on grains such as wheat, rice, corn (maize), barley, oats, rye, or millet for as much as 70-90% of their calories. This would have been true of farm laborers and their wives (and that’s what most of our ancestors would have been).
Indeed, in the current craze of the Keto diet, which apparently avoids all breads like the plague, this is something worth considering. Humans have been eating bread for a really darned long time. In fact, in another one of those "d'oh" moments that was published the other day, it turns out that Neanderthals, i.e., Home Sapien Neanderthalensis, ate piles of carbs.
Well of course they did. They were, after all. . . people.
My mother also made a lot of bread, fairly badly, with oatmeal, which became sort of a commercial trend in later years. And she used lots of barley for thickeners in stuff, such as stew. I was surprised to hear a comment on a Medieval history podcast a year ago or so that this was a Medieval practice and that modern people wouldn't know what that tastes like.
I do.
Anyhow, this article is really good on the switch from whole grain breads to white bread. I highly recommend it.
As a slight aside, Wonder Bread is mentioned in the article but not dwelt on. The article notes how "Wonder Bread" came, during the 1960s and 1970s, to be sort of a symbol of a bland American whiteness, ethnicity wise, during the rise of the counterculture. That's really unfair to the product (which I'll note that I don't personally like), as bread pretty much crosses color lines and ethnicities. Indeed, that's more symbolic I think of the odd American cultural trait of associating food and substances with everything, which is why we now hair care products that advertise what's really a food substance as being in them.
Anyhow, when looking up Wonder Bread for the May 21, 1921 post, I tried to find an advertisement dating back that far and couldn't. But I did hit up on a lot of advertisements, and I was surprised to learn that Wonder Bread's straight arrow reputation may be a bit overdone. At least up to the 1960s, it like to feature shapely women in its advertisements wearing swimsuits and the like. In at least one advertisement of the 40s and 50s it plopped a mid teens teenage girl in an advertisement wearing as little as legally possible with the promise, more or less, that Wonder Bread would help turn her into a bombshell. In the 60s it ran an entire campaign based on the promise that sandwiches made by spouse aspiring women with Wonder Bread were "boy traps" or "date traps". Not exactly kid stuff, and more than a little weird.
1920 was a banner year for women and we've posted a lot of magazine covers that dealt with that. We missed the one above from July, 1920, however.
Magazine illustrations of the period, we'd note, were really art. That's something that's really been lost in the past century.
The thought of Liberty calling on an old style rotary dial phone is a bit odd. Not one of the better posters of the Great War.