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The drama over Potato Head’s gender is a reminder that the 'culture wars' are now profitable.
(RNS) — Every now and then I wonder about the cultural historians who will have to — presumably straight-faced — write a history of the past few years in America.
A little over a year ago, I wrote a column for this very website about the death of Mr. Peanut: the monocle-sporting Planter’s Peanuts mascot (his death, it turned out, was greatly exaggerated). I thought at the time we’d reached the nadir of late modernity.
I was wrong. The latest cultural outcry concerns Mr. Potato Head.
The toy company Hasbro’s minor rebranding of Mr. Potato Head to the more gender-neutral Potato Head — in part to allow for a broader and more inclusive variety of Mr., Mrs. and gender-unspecified potato products — was swiftly greeted by Twittering conservatives as another Horseman of the Cultural Apocalypse: woke progressives so intent on abolishing the gender construct that not even a beloved children’s toy could be allowed to retain his title.
Mark Dice, a YouTube conspiracy theorist and pundit, complained that “Mr. Potato Head has been canceled.” Radio host Erick Erickson attributed the change to the demands of “Woke-o Haram,” punning on the African Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, and Ben Shapiro joked that Mr. Potato Head might next identify as a squash.
Continued below.
Mr. Potato Head becomes woke capitalism's hot potato
The drama over Potato Head’s gender is a reminder that the 'culture wars' are now profitable.
(RNS) — Every now and then I wonder about the cultural historians who will have to — presumably straight-faced — write a history of the past few years in America.
A little over a year ago, I wrote a column for this very website about the death of Mr. Peanut: the monocle-sporting Planter’s Peanuts mascot (his death, it turned out, was greatly exaggerated). I thought at the time we’d reached the nadir of late modernity.
I was wrong. The latest cultural outcry concerns Mr. Potato Head.
The toy company Hasbro’s minor rebranding of Mr. Potato Head to the more gender-neutral Potato Head — in part to allow for a broader and more inclusive variety of Mr., Mrs. and gender-unspecified potato products — was swiftly greeted by Twittering conservatives as another Horseman of the Cultural Apocalypse: woke progressives so intent on abolishing the gender construct that not even a beloved children’s toy could be allowed to retain his title.
Mark Dice, a YouTube conspiracy theorist and pundit, complained that “Mr. Potato Head has been canceled.” Radio host Erick Erickson attributed the change to the demands of “Woke-o Haram,” punning on the African Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, and Ben Shapiro joked that Mr. Potato Head might next identify as a squash.
Continued below.
Mr. Potato Head becomes woke capitalism's hot potato
