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It seemed like an April Fools’ joke — the news that a restaurant famous for its scantily clad waitresses was getting a makeover to make it more family-friendly. But that is, in fact, the potential solution that Hooters’ management has hit upon as it seeks to claw its way out of bankruptcy.
As Bloomberg reported, Neil Kiefer, the CEO of HMC Hospitality Group, described the changes this way: “I’m calling it a re-Hooterization.” In an ironic bit of detail, the article noted that when the Bloomberg reporter met with Kiefer at a Hooters restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, the Brigham Young University men’s basketball team game against VCU was on the big-screen TV.
Cougars fans are likely to cheer any effort to make America more family-friendly, but Russell Moore, the editor of Christianity Today, cautioned that we shouldn’t read too much into the chain’s bankruptcy. It’s not that the brand is too racy, Moore said, but that it’s become almost too mainstream “for an American culture acclimated to online pornography and OnlyFans.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Annie Joy Williams recalls being taken to a Hooters restaurant in 2010 when she was 12 and recognizing that the restaurant wasn’t there to serve her, but to serve “the appetites of America’s men.” That’s too broad an indictment, of course; there are plenty of American men who wouldn’t set foot in the restaurant, which is surely one of the reasons the chain is $350 million in debt.
The idea that Hooters can contort itself into a family brand by dropping “bikini night,” however, seems as plausible as Chuck E. Cheese finding success as a edgy sports bar. But the Bloomberg writers seemed open to that, speculating that, “With the playbook for mainstream American culture undergoing a broad rewrite, more customers may be willing to overlook the risqué association Hooters carries with it in some regions of the country, especially if it delivers on the experience.”
They may not have gotten the memo that MSNBC received; the network reported last week on the surge in young men becoming more conservative and more religious, a trend the MSNBC panel found worrisome because of the political implications. An effective re-Hooterization, in other words, might involve becoming, say, a Chick-fil-A.
Now, everyone wants a red hat
There was a time in the not-so-distant past that red baseball caps were considered toxic by people who don’t like President Donald Trump, so much so that even Cincinnati Reds fans were putting their caps in storage. The New York Times wrote about the trend in 2019, with the headline “Does this red cap make me look MAGA?” That was the same year that The Babylon Bee joked, “MLB bans red baseball caps as symbols of hate.”
But the anti-Trumpers now think the way to beat them is to join them. A fresh crop of red caps is appearing across the world, this time with slogans like “Make America go away” and “Canada is not for sale.”
“It turns out that the very success of the MAGA hat as a symbol of political allegiance — its instant recognizability, even on the small screens of smartphones — has also made it an effective weapon of the opposition, at least internationally. Parody with a point,” Vanessa Friedman wrote for The New York Times.
And, of course, the ease of designing your own red cap online means that various pro-MAGA and anti-MAGA caps proliferate — with one recently sold on eBay that says “Make Recessions Great Again,” in addition to the “Trump was right about everything” cap, which the president himself has promoted.
In another innovative use, anti-Trump doomsday preppers are buying red ball caps just in case things go sideways (as they say in those emergency food supply ads) and they need to blend in with the MAGA overlords in the wilderness. Thanks to Suzy Weiss, writing at The Free Press, for this useful tip.
The upshot: Cincinnati Reds fans, you can get out your red caps again.
Quote of the week
“I always thought the right overstated how judgmental my party was, and I’ll be candid with you, I have a deeper understanding now of that critique than I ever, ever, ever understood.” — Gavin Newsom, telling the Los Angeles Times that some of his “most loyal friends” are reevaluating their friendship because of his recent comments on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Recommended reading
Michael Bretz is a “usually soft-spoken dad, husband and engineer,” but he had a lot to say at a recent town hall in Salt Lake City. He wants to explain:
“This isn’t about the red team against the blue team. This isn’t about hating Donald Trump. This is about doing what’s right for the people and the Constitution, and fighting to ensure that my elected officials do the same.”
“Hi. I’m that angry guy from the town hall”
Michael Kofoed, an economist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is no fan of government inefficiency, but also not sure that mass layoffs in the federal government serve their intended purpose.
“In the private sector, companies seek profits, but public sector goals are more complex given the mandate to solve collective action problems that may not be profitable but needed for markets to function.”
“Hard truths about government efficiency”
Tariffs aside, Trump’s foreign policy centers around China, homeland defense and building up “hard power.” Valerie Hudson examines what that means for the U.S. and the world:
“The Trump Doctrine proceeds from the premise that the United States has lost hard power and must regain it despite interim sacrifice. Tariffs, a new emphasis on shipbuilding, the resurrection of American manufacturing — all are designed to increase the hard power of the United States.”
“The Trump Doctrine is coming into focus. What does it mean for the world?”
Endnotes
Tucker Carlson recently published a moving obituary for his father, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who raised two sons after their mother left the family.
Richard Warner Carlson died of pneumonia at age 84, and, as his son wrote on X, “refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet.”
It is a beautiful and apolitical tribute that is also funny and revealing: “He spoke to his sons every day and had lunch with them once a week for thirty years at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always prefaced by a dice game.”
Contrast it to The New York Times’ obituary to learn why so many conservatives say on social media “you don’t hate the media enough.”
As always, thank you for reading Right to the Point, and feel free to reach out to me with your ideas and bon mots.