Maybe you all remember that particular 2021 gem of a woke-asterisk recruiting pitch. It was so nausea inducing, most veterans I know couldn’t get past the first 30 seconds, less mind sit through the entire 2+ minute fairy tale.
Army and Guard vets were appalled, and we Marines were howling in hilarious, “WTF are they thinking?!” derision. It surely seemed to be the overall sentiment once the veteran world at large was introduced to the barftastic, rainbow ribboned cartoon catastrophe.
Republican senators went ballistic, like Navy veteran Rick Scott’s sputtering indignation during interviews, and Ted Cruz lighting off on Twitter.
Sen. Ted Cruz has accused the Army of projecting an image of “pansies” by featuring a female soldier raised by two moms in a recruiting ad.
He much prefers a more macho Russian ad featuring buff soldiers doing push-ups and jumping from planes.
“Pansy” has long been a slur for gay and weakling. So the Texas Republican’s anti-“woke” crusade has invited both outrage from gay rights activists and derision that he’s turned into “Kremlin Cruz” despite his vehement anti-communism.
…The uproar has simmered since late last week, when Cruz retweeted a viral video that contrasts the Army ad, featuring a soldier who marched for gay rights as a girl, with a Russian recruitment ad that starts with shirtless, chiseled soldiers rising from bed and ends with a sniper taking aim in the snow.
“Holy crap,” Cruz wrote in a tweet. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea.”
Pointing out the ludicrous, touchy-feely aspects of the Army recruitment campaign had the equally entertaining effect of provoking the alphabet soup sex crowd – the target of this exercise in pandering to begin with – to uncork billowing bilious waves of outrage. It could also earn one the coveted “Tool of Putin” award. Man, is there anything that guy can’t do?
…Some accused him of amplifying Kremlin propaganda. Some demanded more precision: Is the U.S. Army “emasculated” by having more women in uniform, or by being inclusive?
In classic style, the progressive meltdown had a major newspaper arguing a straw man vice “Kremlin Cruz’s” actual objection. It did allow them to shift the argument from everyone’s original objection to “women in the military” in general, which then gave them an opportunity for lots of screaming meemie “Republicans suck” quotes from the likes of Tammy Duckworth and Jimmie Kimmel.
Right?
Embarrassingly enough, for all the constant haranguing about how the world has shifted to a progressive state of mind, and the woke-testing they did beforehand, “The Calling” cartoon was so badly received, the Army had to shut the comments down on YouTube.
Cut them right off at the knees. The ad even got its own YouTube version of an X ratio.
Gruesome.
Two weeks ago, the Army’s official recruiting website released a series of animated advertisements showcasing the stories of several soldiers on their journey to join the nation’s oldest branch.
…Since its upload to YouTube, however, this video’s comment section has been disabled. It currently has nearly a million views, 36,000 dislikes and only 775 likes.
“Beginning May 12 we started noticing a significant uptick in negative commentary,” Laura DeFrancisco, public affairs chief for the Army Enterprise Marketing Office, told Army Times. “The comments violated our social media policy and were not aligned with Army values. Out of respect for the safety and wellbeing of our soldiers and their families, we have disabled the comments.”
Ya think, Ms. Marketing Office chica? You will also notice there’s no rank in front of her name.
HOUSTON? WE HAVE A PROBLEM
Oh, well. You win some, you lose some, eh? Especially when the people running your Army can’t stand the people IN your Army…
…and don’t want any more of those kind of people to ever join your Army again.
Biden’s Army Secretary Doesn’t Want 2nd Gen Military Recruits for Fear of a “Warrior Caste”. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service. ~ @Sultanknish https://t.co/Qt37d7fgye
— Ginny (@ginthegin) July 13, 2023
Why on EARTH would you have anyone other than a Bud Light-type marketing executive and her little friends running your recruiting campaigns if you wanted to discourage white, patriotic, traditional backbone-of-the-US military enlistees? If anyone knows what turns off a red-blooded American male, it’s the Karen-y Wharton/Harvard/Groton ad grad type.
Ergo, congratulations are in order for President Biden, Secretary Austin, Thoroughly Modern Milley, and Secretary Wormuth:
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The US army has seen a dramatic drop in the number of white recruits, according to a study.
Last year, according to the Military.com website, the army fell 10,000 short of its 65,000 enlistment target.
Underpinning the drop is a dramatic decrease in white recruits from 44,042 in 2018 to 25,070 in 2023, representing a six per cent reduction in just one year.
It meant that the proportion of white recruits fell from 56.4 per cent in 2018 to 44 per cent.
At the same time, the number of black and Hispanic recruits remained static.
White guys don’t jump to enlist anymore. And it seems that’s a problem.
It’s as if the administration figured whilst spewing all this abuse at that particular demographic – that because they were so dense, Neanderthalic, and blindly patriotic – whites would still join at the same rates. That would leave the Army to act all woke in the meantime, allowing the Army to keep their street cred with the cool kids Army hierarchy, congressional Dems, and the administration constantly virtue-signal to.
All on the back of the same group they despise? Delighted to disappoint them.
Darned if Sec “White Warrior Castes Suck” Wormuth and underlings aren’t singing a little different tune now. But it’s not about their failure, or blatant disrespect for tradition, or their crapped out messaging. Oh, no, no, no.
It’s all about young people today “not understanding” about the military.
…“This has led to a disconnect between the military and a large share of society,” he said.
“Youth of today are not saying no to what the military has to offer. They simply don’t know much about military service.”
OMG what a frickin’ hoot. Believe you me, any kid that ever had a tickle to go in the military knows enough to know they don’t want anything to do with YOUR military, for all the Emma/two mom cartoons/be-all-the-trans-you-can-be pandering in the world.
Oh, hay-yull, no.
And good freakin’ luck NOW trying to find the Ivy League ad grad mah-roon at “Brilliant Recruiting Pitches, Inc” Army Enterprise Marketing Office whose bone-headed, totally no-military-appeal-whatsoever idea “Emma” was.
You can’t. They’re all doin’ the “Hell, no! Wadn’t me, mister” wave-off.
The Army has quietly put Iowahawk’s pillow over the monumentally embarrassing Emma ad’s slumbering face.
The Army has delisted its advertising campaign titled “The Calling” on YouTube, making it harder to find the videos on the platform. The 2021 effort to court potential applicants from LGBTQ+ and other diverse backgrounds sparked a backlash from conservative lawmakers and pundits.
“The Calling” was delisted from the service’s YouTube channel last week, hiding it from search results and recommendations, according to Laura DeFrancisco, a spokesperson for the Army’s marketing arm, who said usage rights for music were set to expire. One of the ads, called “Emma,” featured a soldier who operated Patriot missile systems and was raised by a lesbian couple.
…”The Calling” was made exclusively for YouTube. It became a flashpoint amid the growing political criticism and is still routinely referenced on conservative media — and on Capitol Hill as recently as December.
Like I said above – you can’t find a soul who will admit to knowing a thing about it.
…”Why do we have an Army in a recruiting crisis. … What data drove ‘The Calling?‘” Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., asked defense officials at a hearing on recruiting shortfalls last month.
…”I don’t know the genesis of it. Or why they … ‘The Calling’ was before me,” Agnes Schaefer, assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, said in response to Waltz’s questioning.
Yeah.
Good luck with that Army, there, y’all.