An update of the Anheuser-Busch self immolation saga:  they didn’t just piss off the rednecks, now they pissed off the gays.  I can’t wait to see how they figure out how to piss off the Mexicans.

This is my review of Pariah Brewing How Bout them Oats:

An odd article was thrown out into the ether that somehow or another ended up in a place where I could see it. It was premised on something so off the wall I had no choice but to read it.

In the interest of maintaining our family friendly designation, I found the least objectionable photo of this woman.

The premise?  The HBO show Girls was anti-liberal to its core, and Lena Dunham did it on purpose.  The argument begins with a premise that is almost universally agreed, that nobody on that show in any way is a good person.  They then point out the utter lack of diversity in the cast by identifying the only black character throughout the show was a short lived character that happened to be an Ayn Rand fan.  It continues:

Ray again commits a liberal faux-pas when a rival coffee shop opens up. The shop itself is a perfect parody of 2010s hipster businesses, with the coffee shop (named Helvetica, another perfect encapsulation of this sort of business) having the pointless gimmick of not providing lids, resulting in people stealing them from Ray’s shop. When he confronts them, he misgenders the nonbinary gender goblin employee, played by Lena Dunham’s gender goblin sister**, and is scolded.

The scene makes it clear that the hipster coffee shop and its gender goblin employees are the butt of this joke, especially given the fact that the scene was written just as trans ideology was first taking shape and wasn’t yet the cause célèbre of the left. Yes, Lena Dunham’s sister is nonbinary now, but I cannot find another reading for this scene. It’s not a teaching moment for Ray, or a moment that shows his generation’s values are out of style. They are making fun of a very specific sort of business and the very specific sort of people who might work there, while poking fun of pronoun policing.

A similar incident later in the series shows to me that Lena was likely getting bombarded with trans propaganda at this time and was trying to reconcile it with her prior beliefs. Clearly Lena wasn’t at the woke position yet. A women’s business group in the show admits they have no idea what the fashionable position on admitting trans people is supposed to be, whether it’s feminist to embrace the issue, or more feminist to gatekeep. While Lena now poses with her sister regularly and says all the right things, the show reflects that she likely had improper opinions at the time.

It continues mostly pointing out more evidence the show was not intended to portray feminism as defined by millennials coming of age as necessarily positive.  Contrast this with other shows from earlier generations like The Wonder Years—a very positive representation of growing up in the 60’s.  Nevertheless, a fair number reading right now are reminiscing about the distasteful things they might do with Winnie.

I will admit I only watched one episode after a slew of articles on Breitbart spilled gallons of digital ink explaining why the show was terrible, only to be topped by how terrible a human being Lena Dunham is.  28 year old me thought the show was dumb, and the only offensive part about it was nobody wants to see that lady naked—but we did anyways.  My issue with the argument the show is subliminally based, is it gives way too much credit to Dunham for being capable of playing 4D chess.

The same 4D chess argument thats become rather prevalent in right wing circles.  Maybe people are just dumb?

 

Incidentally, this beer is also from ten years ago.  It pours like pretty decent chicken stock, smells like grapefruit, and has quite a bit of body.  Its not so hoppy that it brings to mind the IPA arms race a few years ago (Triple IPA anyone?)but overall has me reflect on millennial hipster culture in a profoundly negative way.  Its fine.  If you like it, you’ll like it.  I don’t.  Pariah Brewing How Bout them Oats:  2.1/5  6.2% ABV 30 IBU