I'm going to assume you've seen "John Wick," and if you haven't, then here's your spoiler warning, but it's been years now. If you haven't seen it, then you're really missing out.
Anyway, at one point, Wick's home is attacked by a mobster's son because Wick denied him his car. This attack takes Wick completely off guard and, during the ensuing fight, they kill the puppy that Wick's late wife gave him as a companion to help him manage his grief. The puppy's death kicks off the entire "John Wick" quadrilogy.
Now, how many of you in my readership would see that scene and say, "this movie endorses puppy murder"?
None of you would, because none of you are stupid enough to think that a mere depiction of something is the writers, directors, and actors secretly winking and nudging at you through the screen to say, "murdering puppies is something we approve of!."
You know that a mere depiction is not an endorsement.
Yet, that's exactly what leftists are accusing the Good Good golf company of as I write this. I'm even getting comments on my commentary about the situation on X. That's how widespread that madness is.
To catch you up, Good Good is a golf apparel company that decided it was going to make an ad without using any actors or writers with any experience. They wanted to riff off the hit movie "Obsession," and ended up making an awkward ad that featured a man pushing a woman to the ground when she was about to touch his favorite driver.
Callaway apologizes for ‘Good Good’ ad showing woman shoved to ground pic.twitter.com/oXknagyBqR
— Dallas Texas TV (@DallasTexasTV) August 25, 2026
The ad went over so poorly that Callaway, which approved the ad, suddenly abandoned their partnership with Good Good, and Good Good itself is now throwing its hands up in surrender to the cancel mob, which is a huge mistake. Our culture has done a lot to push back on that kind of mob rule, and it sucks to watch corporations fall right back into the bad habit of kneeling to the mob.
Anyway, as I pointed out in that VIP column, one can depict a woman getting thrown, smacked, and tackled comedically, so long as it leans into the absurdity of it. That's why you can laugh at Betty White getting tackled during a Snickers commercial. The more ridiculous the circumstance, the funnier it is. It's a time-tested comedic bit. Good Good's ad tried to get there, but didn't quite lean into the absurdity enough, thus making an ad that comes off as kind of sinister.
But behind the outrage is an outrageous claim.
They're accusing Good Good of endorsing violence against women. The pearl-clutching around this claim is what has both Good Good and Callaway shaking in their boots and trying to walk back from it. Good Good even used the old phrase "we have a lot to work on," which usually means we're about to metaphorically feed the outrage beast in hopes that it eats us last.
This is idiotic.
Nobody is endorsing violence against women in this ad. In fact, the point was to make the man look like he's gone crazy because of how much he loves his driver, making his extreme actions seem like he's suffering from some sort of mania. Shoulder-checking a woman over it was supposed to show how crazy he's gotten.
But the leftists, namely feminist brigades, are turning this into another "saying the quiet part out loud" moment from the mustache-twisting cartoon villain that is the "patriarchy." To begin bending the knee to the people claiming this is to effectively acknowledge that their cockamamie idea - that this was a result of unacknowledged misogyny - is walking society backward.
It would've been better for Good Good to say, "Our ad missed the mark, but if you think we hate women and want to do violence against them, you're insane," then let the controversy naturally die out as the cancel mob learned it wasn't going to get any blood. Any partnerships lost would've been regained in short order as demand for the product increased.
I'm not mad at Good Good for a bad ad; I'm mad at them because they fed a beast that I and many others have been bleeding to death for years now. This has empowered the bad actors in our society and reinforced the idea that with enough faux-moral outrage, they can seize control.
Corporations need to stop being cowards, because the Left isn't going to stop trying to find reasons to be outraged, especially if outrage leads to control.
