Today in Stupid Boycotts: The People vs. Schweddy BallsS

People are always getting upset about things and boycotting products and usually it's very dumb. There are two cases in point today: First, a conservative group wants Ben & Jerry's limited-edition "Schweddy Balls" ice cream boycotted, and then Glenn Beck is against revolutionary jeans.

Queer-loving ice cream hippies Ben & Jerry have created a limited-edition ice cream blend based on the popular Saturday Night Live skit which has Alec Baldwin, playing a man named Schweddy, talking about his dessert balls. Thus, Schweddy Balls. Delicious! All in good fun, it's just ice cream, no big deal. Wait, no, actually, VERY BIG DEAL.

For the American Family Association spin-off group One Million Moms, at least. They've sent an angry letter to Ben & Jerry's requesting that no more Schweddy Balls are put in America's grocers' freezers. "The vulgar new flavor has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive," the morally upstanding letter cried. "Not exactly what you want a child asking for at the supermarket." Ah yes. Repullllsive! Genitals! Ack! And the the ol' "I'd like the Nanny State, which I claim to hate, to raise my children for me." Terrific.

Ben & Jerry's, for their part, says that the product is selling like crazy and they have no plans to stop waving their Schweddy Balls in everyone's faces and put them away. So, sorry, Million Moms. These balls are Schweddy and you're just going to have to deal with them.

Meanwhile, overly microwaved baked potato Glenn Beck says that he is going to boycott Levi's jeans because the new ad in their "Go Forth" campaign shows young people at some sort of street rally or riot and thus "glorifies revolution." Yup, apparently!

The "Go Forth" ads should be banned because they take lovely bits of American poetry, in this case Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart," and reduce them down to the soundtrack for skinny young people writhing around in blue jeans. But the jean company as a whole should probably not be boycotted because of some sort of revolution-goading. But that's how Beck sees it, saying on his radio show yesterday:

It's hard to believe that a company associated with America and working-class values would use global revolutions and progressivism to sell their products, but that's exactly what Levi's is doing in their new commercials.

Yes. Nothing remotely American about revolution, nor anything working-class about it either. That's just not how revolution ever works, not once in history. However, revolutions have certainly been sparked by jeans ads in the past, so it's best to keep an eye on them. Excellent work as always, Mr. Beck.

That's today in stupid boycotts!