🌊 What Kamala Harris and Sydney Sweeney Have in Common

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By Max Frost

The legacy media thinks that Sydney Sweeney is the last person a business wants to promote their brand. 

As MSNBC reported this week: 

That article – “Sweeney's ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness” – was about a new marketing campaign the 27-year-old Euphoria star did for American Eagle. If somehow you haven’t seen it yet, it features her buttoning her American Eagle jeans and breathily saying, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color...my jeans are blue."

The Wall Street Journal critiqued the ad in business terms: In an article entitled, “American Eagle’s Male-Geared Sydney Sweeney Ads Have Gen Z Women Scratching Their Heads,” it cited one TikTok user who didn’t like the ad. The journalist added that the marketing campaign “seemed at odds with the campaign’s nod to domestic violence awareness.” She then noted that American Eagle has “been lauded for inclusive advertising and sizing,” and found an expert to say that the new campaign seems “like a departure from their core values.”

Yet in a capitalist society, a corporation’s “core values” are making money – and people support companies by how they spend their money, not what they say on TikTok.

And they keep supporting Sydney Sweeney. 

The Syd Sweeney industry exposes journalists as once again being frighteningly out of touch, which we’ll get more into later. But that fact is one cause of the anti-establishment wave that washed over Kamala Harris this November and continues to fuel a rightward shift in the American body politic: Last week, a Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans have a record-low opinion of the Democratic Party and prefer Republicans on all major issues. Pew, meanwhile, found that 18- to 29-year-old men have shifted 44 points toward the Republicans – and 18- to 29-year-old women 14 points – since 2023.

So what has Harris learned from this? Little, as she made clear this week.

On Thursday, Harris announced the upcoming release of her tell-all book, “107 Days” – “a behind-the-scenes look at my experience leading the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.”

So where did she go that night to promote the book? Stephen Colbert, whose show was just canceled as it sheds its audience and hemorrhages $40M a year. 

Harris – whose campaign concluded with an unprecedented rightward shift among every racial and socioeconomic group below the age of 60 – walked onto the stage to chants of USA, while Colbert cracked half-jokes to forced laughter from the audience. When the conversation turned to politics, Harris said, “I don’t want to go back in the system – it’s broken.”

The audience gasped.

Editor’s Note

For those wondering: No, we did not buy the Sweeney’s bathwater soap. It sold out before we could check out. 

Just kidding – but in all seriousness, the perspectives of the media elite are ever more out of touch with the mainstream. We’re running another story tomorrow that really drives that home, and we think you all will enjoy it. 

But what do you think? Is the Sydney Sweeney campaign a good move or bad? Do we have it backwards? Does it anger more people than it pleases? And is Kamala making the right move by going on Colbert? Let us know by replying here.

Thanks for reading. If you missed any of our prior articles, check them out below. A lot of people seemed to enjoy yesterday’s article on Israel, Syria, and the Druze. 

• Israel’s Endgame in Syria

• What’s Crossing the Canadian Border?

• Roca’s Exclusive Interview with Mayor Eric Adams

• The Death of Late Night Comedy

• Everything About Epstein’s Relationship With Trump

See you back here tomorrow.
—Max and Max