What’s worse than a drink called the Pill Cosby?
By Capsule-covered cocktail ‘Pill Cosby’ removed from DC bar drink list https://t.co/MutukRru79 pic.twitter.com/mc2lbz2IJP
— Eater (@Eater) May 22, 2017
Some background – A local restaurant/bar/clothing store briefly had a drink called the Pill Cosby. One of the business’ owners claimed that it was meant in part to raise awareness. And boy did it ever! Possibly not in the way they wanted. However, trolling on the subject of rape in exchange for a great deal of attention could well have been the goal. At any rate, the owners took it off the menu and apologized.
The whole thing was obnoxious and it was hard to imagine who or what could make it worse.
The answer of course is Nick Gillespie at Reason, with a sock full of False Equivalencies.
Making things worse : libertarians :: bouncing : Tiggers.
In questionable taste? Certainly. But is offering the drink actually participating in “rape culture,” as various Twitter folks aver, or is it something else altogether, as the operators of the business suggest? Or maybe it’s neither—maybe it’s just tasteless joke that is neither particularly offensive nor edifying. Does everything need to have a higher value in order to justify its existence? I hope not.
Because he’d be fucked if higher value were the standard for existence.
Libertarian follow-up question:
JFC.
Is this an example of disciplining via market forces and/or voice (as opposed to exit or loyalty, in the parlance of Albert O. Hirschman)? Or is it simply the latest sign of political correctness and identity politics stamping out anything that anyone can find objectionable?
OK, already that’s two questions. But it was a lot to load into one rhetorical designed to help people who think Gillespie is clever figure out that potential consumers objecting to a menu item that makes light of rape can’t be a legitimate use of the Free Market because Reason.
He could have stopped there. But he hadn’t yet displayed the gibbertarian’s full range of idiocy with a final False Equivalency x Gotcha hybrid.
And will the next casualty be “the Marvin Gaye,” a drink whose name is at the bottom of the menu in the picture of the drink above and to the right? Gaye came to an ugly and sad end, shot to death by his own father even as his career was reviving in the mid-1980s.
Because there’s no difference between a punny drink that makes reference to a man accused of doing bad things to other people – complete with pill capsule garnish in case a Reason fan needs help getting the joke – and a drink that bears the name a man who had a bad thing done to him. Touché, M. Gillespie!
