Pepsi, United Airlines, Sean Spicer and Everything Else Wrong With the World

Where do I begin? This last week has been filled with one epic blunder after the other. First there was the Pepsi commercial that was beyond insensitive, and quite frankly, ignorant. Not only did Pepsi trivialize the struggle of movements like Black Lives Matter, but they chose perhaps one of our society’s greatest symbols of superficiality to convey their message, a Kardashian! The irony is too much. How could Pepsi be so tone deaf? When I began to think that a company could not have a bigger PR nightmare, United Airlines stepped to the plate and said “You wanna bet?”

By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have seen the video of a United Airlines passenger being dragged from a plane when he refused to give up his seat after the airline “overbooked” its flight. The only thing is, though, that the flight was not actually overbooked. Rather, they wanted to put their crewmember on the flight. Apparently the crew was needed in Louisville in order to avoid cancelling flights. The end result was a three-hour delay and the loss of customers like me.[1] Even if they had overbooked the flight, that still did not justify dragging the passenger off the plane. The backlash was bad enough that their stock dropped 1.1 points, wiping out about $255 million off its market capitalization. Again, I thought to myself, surely no one can do anything more ridiculous than this and then Sean Spicer appeared at the podium yesterday to immediately disprove my hypothesis.

Have you ever met someone and wondered how did he get out of high school? That is how I feel about Sean Spicer. His press conferences are petty, confrontational and riddled with “alternative facts.” Yesterday, however, he reached an all time low. In decrying the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Assad, Spicer said Hitler, “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” Now, I don’t know what Spicer calls a gas chamber, but it’s definitely what I would call the use of a chemical weapon. To make matters worse, Spicer made this patently wrong statement during the week of passover. Even though he later apologized for his misstatement, I still do not understand how such an incompetent person could hold this postion. I am convinced that Spicer’s mother must be best friends with Trump and asked him to give her boy a job. After his comment I was tempted to ask myself yet again if anything more absurd could happen, but I was too afraid that someone might answer.

While these three events are ridiculous and worthy of our scorn, they are also symptomatic of large societal shortcomings. I think they highlight at least three broader issues: (1) The reign of ignorance, (2) the rise in superficiality and (3) the lack of humanity between people.

The Reign of Ignorance

Spicer’s ignorance about Hitler and World War II are appalling. Clearly he did not pay attention during all those history classes discussing gas chambers and other horrors of the Holocaust. But sadly, his ignorance is not unique to him. In fact, the entire Trump administration has thrived on creating “alternative facts” and not being held accountable. Trump has readily admitted that he does believe he needs to read the daily briefings and he gets most of his news from Fox News.[2] Not only is Trump comfortable flaunting his ignorance, but his supporters do not condemn him for it. His blatant disregard for information and knowledge seems to only endear him to his base, not repel them. We are in an age where ignorance is unashamedly in power. Therefore, Spicer’s comments is appalling not because of its depth of ignorance, but because of its reflection of a scarier reality.

American Superficiality

Pepsi’s attempt at the commodification of resistance is distasteful, but I cannot say that it is surprising. American capitalism is inherently exploitive, and so Pepsi co-opting the resistance movement to sell its product is not shocking, but very American. Also, we live in an era of social media, where people are always adding a filter to their picture or recording a snapchat video repeatedly just to get the right shot. I’m guilty of this. We are more concerned about appearing a certain way rather than actually living a certain way. The end result is that our actions are not always dictated by conviction, but by the need to create the appearance of conviction. Pepsi’s commercial falls into this trap. It was more concerned about appearing socially conscious, while actually failing to be socially conscious.

Lack of Humanity Toward Each Other

Finally, the United Airline incident demonstrates the lack of humanity we have in dealing with each other. Our society prioritizes saving and making money above the need to treat everyone with dignity. That was the motivator for United. They did not want to have to cancel their Louisville flight, so they believed it was better to drag a customer off the plane, batter and bloody him, rather than lose money. This type of calculation can only occur in a society whose ethos condones, and at time praises it. Therefore, while United is worthy of our condemnation, so is the society that implicitly supports their actions.

--Until Next Time--

Palooke

[1] Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I flew on United. I think it was in 1992. But you still get the point.

[2] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-briefings-232479; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/trump-s-world-increasingly-shaped-by-fox-news-and-fox-by-trump