Sidney Sweeney Turns a Perfect Look toward Woke Stupidity
Rather than writing much about economics today, I think I’m going to go with Sidney Sweeney’s priceless response to absolutely inane criticism about an ad where she modeled some jeans. The interview can be found in one of the stories below, but I’ll post the whole video here (forwarded to the part under discussion) for everyone.
The interviewer asked Sweeney if she wanted to comment on the huge kerfuffle among those who love to be woke with their loud claims that she is racist for doing the ad because it is supposedly racist to think a White woman’s beauty comes from some great genetics (though they would find it completely fine, I’m sure, if the jeans ad had run an equally beautiful Black woman with that slogan) as if having “great genes” automatically translates to having “superior genes to other races” if it is said about a beautiful White woman.
The people who signal their virtue in this self-righteous way are the real racists because they are constantly trying to stir up racial resentment needlessly. The noise made over the ad is reportedly so great (see the story in the headlines below) that it has caused a division between Sweeney and a costar “of color” who bought into the nonsense, ostensibly because Sweeney won’t apologize for it … probably because there isn’t a racist bone in Sweeney’s body, and she doesn’t need to explain or justify herself, much less posture as self-critical over her choice.
The interviewer asked her, “Do you have a response you’d like to share to all of that?” Sweeney gave those who would take such umbrage over mere wordplay in a jeans ad that look of “Are you an idiot” and then just laughed it off and said, “When I have a view I want to share, I’m sure I’ll have no problem expressing it.” I’m sure she won’t.
The national woke disdain for the ad was either too dumb to comment on, or, as Sweeney said, she’ll let her art speak for itself. I liked the fact that she was not rattled in the least by woke views that are so empty and not apologizing because people are offended about nothing.
She started the interview by saying before the topic even came up that she has her views on politics and social issues, but she’s not a person who wants to tell others what to think. When the question finally came up, she lived up to her principle. She’d rather just do art that gives them things to think about.
Hollywood critics seem to have been against her because she is apparently conservative or leans Republican. I don’t actually know, but she should be welcome to have whatever view she wants without it causing people to pan her work. The whole woke stuff is so dumb that I loved her casual disdain and her confidence in just laughing the critics off and letting her work speak for itself. It’s so opposite of so many Hollywood stars who think people want to hear their political views or value them. She didn’t even go there when asked.
I’ve not followed Sidney Sweeney nor seen much of her work, so I don’t know much about her, but I loved the light response: (She’s go my vote.)
On the economics front
I’ll just quickly note that the lead story says that stocks have carried the economy through its present slow decline; but, once government labor reports start coming out again, they could break the market and flush everything. That’s a day after my writing about how non-government labor reports are now already moving in that direction. Another report in that direction came out today by ADP, showing the numbers are deteriorating quickly.
I have been covering jobs a lot because I do think they’ll be a key breaking point that is being masked right now by the government shutdown postponing the labor reports that market analysts and economists see as the gold standard. I do not think they are a standard at all, though I use them because they lead people’s opinions. When I use them, I usually comment on how unreliable they are and how they lean overly optimistic in their adjustments.
The latest report by ADP, shows that ADP’s previous slightly more upbeat report was, as I figured when I wrote about it, just one of those bumps that keeps anything in economics from being a straight line. As I suspected, their report today went right back to the declining jobs trend they had been showing most of the year, which follows the other reports I presented as likely more accurate at the time when ADP’s previous report was issued:
The ADP weekly jobless report pointed to a deterioration in US labor momentum, stating that “for the four weeks ending Oct. 25, 2025, private employers shed an average of 11,250 jobs a week, suggesting that the labor market struggled to produce jobs consistently during the second half of the month.”
All the non-government reports are now in alignment. When jobs start to turn like this, unemployment typically geoes parabolic. We’ve been sitting on the edge of that kind of turn since February with ADP’s payroll numbers coming in below the +150,000 recessionary level every month, but now clearly trending into actual negative numbers.
There is plenty about it in the headlines, so now the economy has a both bad labor market and rising inflation—the perfect picture of the stagflation I’ve promised for a couple of years in outlining how the next big bust will begin.
(Now for something more lighthearted, you can go back to the start of the Sweeney interview … or anywhere you prefer, of course, or on to the headlines below if you’re a paying subscriber.)