Ireland, Netherlands, Among Four Countries Boycotting 2026 Eurovision Song Contest In Protest Of Israel
'Israel deserves to be represented on every stage around the world'
AI can fake a face — but not a soul
The New York Times recently profiled Scott Jacqmein, an actor from Dallas who sold his likeness to TikTok for $750 and a free trip to the Bay Area. He hasn’t landed any TV shows, movies, or commercials, but his AI-generated likeness has — a virtual version of Jacqmein is now “acting” in countless ads on TikTok. As the Times put it, Jacqmein “fields one or two texts a week from acquaintances and friends who are pretty sure they have seen him pitching a peculiar range of businesses on TikTok.”
Now, Jacqmein “has regrets.” But why? He consented to sell his likeness. His image isn’t being used illegally. He wanted to act, and now — at least digitally — he’s acting. His regrets seem less about ethics and more about economics.
The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity.
Times reporter Sapna Maheshwari suggests as much. Her story centers on the lack of royalties and legal protections for people like Jacqmein.
She also raises moral concerns, citing examples where digital avatars were used to promote objectionable products or deliver offensive messages. In one case, Jacqmein’s AI double pitched a “male performance supplement.” In another, a TikTok employee allegedly unleashed AI avatars reciting passages from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” TikTok removed the tool that made the videos possible after CNN brought the story to light.
When faces become property
These incidents blur into a larger problem — the same one raised by deepfakes. In recent months, digital impostors have mimicked public figures from Bishop Robert Barron to the pope. The Vatican itself has had to denounce fake homilies generated in the likeness of Leo XIV. Such fabrications can mislead, defame, or humiliate.
But the deepest problem with digital avatars isn’t that they deceive. It’s that they aren’t real.
Even if Jacqmein were paid handsomely and religious figures embraced synthetic preaching as legitimate evangelism, something about the whole enterprise would remain wrong. Selling one’s likeness is a transaction of the soul. It’s unsettling because it treats what’s uniquely human — voice, gesture, and presence — as property to be cloned and sold.
When a person licenses his “digital twin,” he doesn’t just part with data. He commodifies identity itself. The actor’s expressions, tone, and mannerisms become a bundle of intellectual property. Someone else owns them now.
That’s why audiences instinctively recoil at watching AI puppets masquerade and mimic people. Even if the illusion is technically impressive, it feels hollow. A digital replica can’t evoke the same moral or emotional response as a real human being.
Selling the soul
This isn’t a new theme in art or philosophy. In a classic “Simpsons” episode, Bart sells his soul to his pal Milhouse for $5 and soon feels hollow, haunted by nightmares, convinced he’s lost something essential. The joke carries a metaphysical truth: When we surrender what defines us as human — even symbolically — we suffer a real loss.
For those who believe in an immortal soul, as Jesuit philosopher Robert Spitzer argues in “Science at the Doorstep to God,” this loss is more than psychological. To sell one’s likeness is to treat the image of the divine within as a market commodity. The transaction might seem trivial — a harmless digital contract — but the symbolism runs deep.
Oscar Wilde captured this inversion of morality in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” His protagonist stays eternally young while his portrait, the mirror of his soul, decays. In our digital age, the roles are reversed: The AI avatar remains young and flawless while the human model ages, forgotten and spiritually diminished.
Jacqmein can’t destroy his portrait. It’s contractually owned by someone else. If he wants to stop his digital self from hawking supplements or energy drinks, he’ll need lawyers — and he’ll probably lose. He’s condemned to watch his AI double enjoy a flourishing career while he struggles to pay rent. The scenario reads like a lost episode of “Black Mirror” — a man trapped in a parody of his own success. (In fact, “The Waldo Moment” and “Hang the DJ” come close to this.)
RELATED:Cybernetics promised a merger of human and computer. Then why do we feel so out of the loop?
The moral exit
The conventional answer to this dilemma is regulation: copyright reforms, consent standards, watermarking requirements. But the real solution begins with refusal. Actors shouldn’t sell their avatars. Consumers shouldn’t support platforms that replace people with synthetic ghosts.
If TikTok and other media giants populate their feeds with digital clones, users should boycott them and demand “fair-trade human content.” Just as conscientious shoppers insist on buying ethically sourced goods, viewers should insist on art and advertising made by living, breathing humans.
Tech evangelists argue that AI avatars will soon become indistinguishable from the people they’re modeled on. But that misses the point. The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity. They want to see imperfection, effort, and presence. They want to see life.
If we surrender that, we’ll lose something far more valuable than any acting career or TikTok deal. We’ll lose the very thing that makes us human.
Maryland State University Student Government Excludes Jewish Students From Vote On Boycotting Israel
Jews were excluded from voting on a UMD student government boycott, sanctions, and divestment resolution against the state of Israel.Cracker Barrel’s $700 million recipe for disaster
Cracker Barrel thought it could buy loyalty with $700 million and a new look. Instead, it bought itself a revolt.
The Tennessee-based chain wasn’t supposed to change. Not like this. The rocking chairs, the country kitsch, Uncle Herschel leaning on a barrel — all of it reassured customers that some part of America still felt the same.
Cracker Barrel had better pay attention. Like Bud Light, it now suffers from a grave, self-inflicted wound that could fester for years.
You always knew what you were getting at the place: coffee in a thick, white mug, biscuits on the table, a place that felt familiar no matter how far from home.
Now, the company is spending a fortune to chase “relevance” and “inclusivity,” and customers know it’s more than biscuits and gravy at stake.
Oh, come on. People are losing their minds over a chain restaurant, for Pete’s sake. Why?
Maybe because people don’t see Cracker Barrel that way. The brand was a promise, and that promise was continuity.
With its new minimalist logo and glossy interiors, the company has traded that sense of belonging for homogenized corporate drivel. In doing so, it may have destroyed what made it matter in the first place.
Innovating into oblivion
Julie Masino, who took over as CEO in 2023, has said bluntly: “We’re just not as relevant as we once were.”
She had reason to worry. Before the pandemic, Cracker Barrel had more than 660 locations and steady traffic. COVID closures, rampant inflation, an obvious decline in food quality, and a sluggish recovery left revenues flat by 2023. Margins tightened, expansion stalled, and a chain once synonymous with dependable growth suddenly looked like it was falling behind.
Masino’s $700 million bet was supposed to stop the slide. It may accelerate it. And the reason should be as obvious as the chunky, black hipster frames perched on Masino’s nose: Customers didn’t come to Cracker Barrel for “relevance” or “innovation” or any other trendy marketing buzzword.
They came for what didn’t change: a road-trip landmark where the food was predictable, the service unpretentious and unhurried, and the atmosphere soaked in nostalgia — as close to “authentic” as a multibillion-dollar corporation can get.
For millions of Americans, Cracker Barrel represented a world that seemed to endure while everything else raced ahead. It was so successful on that score that some people believe the chain is much older than it really is. (It was founded in 1969 by a Shell Oil executive looking to boost service station sales. It doesn’t even rank in the top 15 oldest restaurant chains in the country.)
Not another culture-war fight
Some on the left dismiss the reaction to Cracker Barrel as just more MAGA foot-stomping on social media — the latest culture-war kerfuffle by stuck-in-the-past conservatives. They’re wrong as usual.
Sure, “get woke, go broke,” and all that. It’s true your average Cracker Barrel diehard wasn’t a fan of the rainbow rocking chair post from a couple of Pride Months ago. And the 2022 introduction of Impossible™ breakfast sausage on the menu prompted instant online blowback. But the subsequent “boycott” — if you can call it that — flamed out, and Impossible meat remains on the menu today.
This rebrand is different. A $700 million transformation isn’t a menu experiment. It’s a wholesale attempt to rewrite the chain’s identity — the one thing about Cracker Barrel that didn’t need fixing.
No doubt Masino saw the old Cracker Barrel logo as outdated and hokey. Does she think the flyover hicks she condescends were so clueless they thought it was cutting edge?
Branding or ‘blanding’?
What Masino missed is that sometimes hokey and outdated is good. The rocking chairs out front, the general store kitsch, Uncle Herschel leaning on the barrel — all of these were emblems of comfort and familiarity.
More than that, they represented a promise: After all these years, we still know what’s important to you — and it isn’t the kind of overpriced, out-of-touch “market research” that has ruined so many other brands.
— (@)
On X last week, an AI parody of a “rebranded” Cracker Barrel made the rounds: a soulless glass-and-steel box with the logo hovering above like an afterthought. The joke worked because it could be real. We’ve seen Taco Bell and McDonald’s turn their restaurants into sleek mausoleums for fast food, all dark angles and no soul. Marketers call it “blanding.” Customers call it: I guess we’re eating in a bank lobby now.
Corporate America tells itself that relevance requires reinvention. In practice, it often means severing ties with the traditions that gave a company its identity. Corporate America treats continuity as dead weight, when in fact it’s ballast.
RELATED:Cracker Barrel’s long history of cozying up to left-leaning organizations exposed
Injury to insult
Corporate America made the same mistake with Bud Light. When Anheuser-Busch partnered with Dylan Mulvaney in 2023, critics scoffed, predicting conservatives would soon move on. Instead, Bud Light went from the best-selling light beer in America to a distant second. It has yet to recover.
The left will say this just goes to show how “transphobic” Bud Light drinkers are. And yes, Mulvaney’s bizarre charade of “girlhood” was deeply disturbing — and deeply irritating. But the more egregious sin of that campaign was its utter, insulting indifference to why consumers valued Bud Light.
Cracker Barrel had better pay attention. This is not another passing squall. Like Bud Light, it now suffers from a grave, self-inflicted wound that could fester for years.
Cracker Barrel has always been in the business of selling hospitality: an unpretentious, unfussy repast that is dependably consistent. It’s not that its customers didn’t know it wasn’t really a humble country store; it’s that those country store trappings promised an effort to make you feel truly welcome — a rarity in today’s data-driven, lowest-common-denominator world.
Strip it all away, and you’re left with the same cynical corporate propaganda — a fake smile that barely conceals a sneer of contempt.
Masino should have seen this coming. All she needed to avoid this disaster was to know her customers. For better or worse, she’s getting to know them now.
Cracker Barrel's long history of cozying up to left-leaning organizations exposed: Report
Cracker Barrel is facing outrage over the decision to redesign the company's iconic logo and the appearance of the chain's restaurants. It has also surfaced that the beloved national restaurant chain has been aligning with woke organizations for years, according to reports.
As Blaze News reported in June 2023, Cracker Barrel faced boycotts over celebrating Pride Month. Cracker Barrel received backlash for proudly announcing that the restaurant chain with southern comfort food was vowing to push DEI initiatives with an LGBTQ+ alliance.
'Cracker Barrel didn't just lose its logo. It lost its soul.'
The Cracker Barrel Old Country Store previously shared a social media post featuring a photo of a rainbow-colored version of the chain's iconic rocking chair sitting on the porch. The photo had the caption: "We are excited to celebrate Pride Month with our employees and guests. Everyone is always welcome at our table (and our rainbow rocker). Happy Pride!"
The Tennessee-based restaurant touts the company's "Business Resource Groups," which "allow employees to come together with common interests, perspectives, and experiences around topics such as race, ethnicity, gender identity, and other special interests, space to be a community."
Cracker Barrel highlights several special interest groups within the organization, including:
- LGBTQ+ Alliance: "Supporting Home Office and Field employees to bring their whole selves to work while strengthening Cracker Barrel's relationship to the LGBTQ+ community."
- Be Bold: "The mission of Be Bold is to cultivate and develop Black Leaders within the Cracker Barrel organization utilizing allyship, mentorship, and education to create a path to continued excellence as well as a vibrant and diverse community."
- HOLA: "HOLA's mission is to promote Hispanic and Latino culture through hiring, developing, and retaining talent within Cracker Barrel. To create a culture of inclusivity and awareness through community outreach."
- Women's Connect: "Our mission & goal is to inspire the women of Cracker Barrel by empowering, educating and engaging to achieve the strategic initiatives of Cracker Barrel."
Anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck revealed Cracker Barrel's ties with left-leaning organizations.
Starbuck claimed that Cracker Barrel had sponsored Human Rights Campaign events for 10 years.
Starbuck wrote on the X social media platform, "They even brought an HRC representative to their Tennessee HQ to do a pronoun and transgenderism training."
The Human Rights Campaign is described as being the "nation’s largest LGBT-interest activist organization" and having a "leading role in Democratic Party politics and left-leaning activism" by InfluenceWatch — an organization that provides "accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues."
"Cracker Barrel worked with a group called Conexión Américas as part of their DEI efforts," Starbuck asserted. "This group helps illegal immigrants, providing them with lawyers, and the executive director opposes President Trump’s deportations."
Starbuck continued, "Cracker Barrel sponsored the Out & Equal LGBTQ Workplace Advocate Conference and presented a workshop on how Cracker Barrel has made progress supporting LGBTQ+ causes."
Starbuck noted that Cracker Barrel won the 2018 award for top LGBT employee resource group from Out & Equal.
Starbuck accused the Southern-style restaurant chain of creating a "special 'diverse' suppliers program focused on increasing 'diversity' among suppliers."
Starbuck highlighted that Cracker Barrel partnered with Nashville Pride and River City Pride.
Blaze News previously reported that the company hired three marketing agencies to "help with its redesign as part of a $700 million larger transformation plan."
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck stated, "Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino said on Good Morning America this week that people are thrilled about the [restaurant's] rebrand. I think she's lying."
"Woke ideology has changed our country in countless ways, some of which we may never get back. But Cracker Barrel has always represented the one thing I think so many Americans currently crave: NOSTALGIA," Beck added. "You go to Cracker Barrel for the rocking chairs outside, the meals that taste like grandma's home cooking, and the simple game of Chinese checkers on the table."
"'Rebrand' all of that to something more modern, something more inclusive, and something that erases those feelings, and you're 'rebranding' the SOLE reason why anyone goes there to begin with," Beck concluded.
Blaze Media contributor Carol Roth said, "Cracker Barrel's stock is down double digits over investors['] concerns that its new rebrand, including changing its logo and remodeling its dining rooms, will alienate loyal customers. This is just the latest example in a long list of companies who don’t understand their core, loyal customers."
A post on X with more than 28,000 likes stated, "Cracker Barrel didn’t just lose its logo. It lost its soul."
A spokesperson for Cracker Barrel told Fox News, "Our values haven't changed, and the heart and soul of Cracker Barrel haven’t changed."
"And Uncle Herschel remains front and center in our restaurants and on our menu," the spokesperson said of the face of the restaurant chain. "He is the face of ‘the Herschel Way,’ the foundation of how our 70,000-plus employees provide the country hospitality for which we are known."
"Cracker Barrel has been a destination for comfort and community for more than half a century, and this fifth evolution of the brand’s logo, which works across digital platforms as well as billboards and roadside signs, is a call-back to the original and rooted even more in the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all back in 1969," Cracker Barrel said.
Cracker Barrel said it "has not participated in the Human Rights Campaign Index or had any affiliation with HRC in several years."
Cracker Barrel did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Blaze News.
Recent boycotts relating to the current culture wars have been directed at Bud Light, Target, and Chick-fil-A.
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Pride Month’s true competition? Faith, family, freedom
This June, as rainbow flags flutter and parades march on, a noticeable shift has occurred — corporate America is stepping back from its once-vocal support of Pride Month. That retreat offers conservatives not just a moment to observe but a moment to reflect: What are the values we ought to be truly proud of? What are we, as a nation, actually celebrating?
This year, according to Gravity Research, nearly 4 in 10 companies are scaling back Pride-related activities — a major jump from just 9% last year. Major sponsors like Google, Home Depot, Mastercard, and Citi have withdrawn support from some of the largest Pride events in North America. Even entertainment giants like Netflix and Disney have noticeably toned down their rainbow-wrapped algorithms.
If this trend is truly reversing, what should we celebrate instead?
These aren’t isolated incidents. They are part of a growing corporate recalibration — one triggered by consumer backlash. The Bud Light and Target controversies of recent years proved that when brands pander to divisive ideologies, everyday Americans take notice — and they push back. The market has spoken, and many companies are now listening. I’ll crack a Coors Light to that.
None of this is to dismiss the real people behind Pride Month — Americans who genuinely desire dignity, respect, and the freedom to live without fear or hostility. Every person is made in the image of God and deserves to be treated with decency. But that’s precisely why the corporate exploitation of these communities is so hollow. When support is only loud during ad campaigns and silent when there's pushback, it reveals that the motive was never about justice — it was about profit. Those who truly care about human dignity should be just as offended by this performative marketing as anyone else.
If companies are now walking away from Pride because it’s no longer profitable, we should ask a deeper question: Were they ever really “with” the LGBT community in the first place — or were they simply exploiting a cause to sell products?
The answer is obvious.
It wasn’t support — it was a sales strategy.Betrayal dressed in bright colors. You can’t sell “authenticity,” and these brands proved it.
What we’ve witnessed over the past decade is the rise — and now the reckoning — of performative activism. Rainbow logos in June. BLM hashtags in July. DEI statements in quarterly reports. All too often, these campaigns have felt more like virtue-signaling PR stunts than sincere commitments. It’s what critics have dubbed “rainbow capitalism”: when a company paints itself in the colors of a movement, not to live its values but to boost its bottom line.
One organization that has been instrumental in exposing this performative activism is Consumers’ Research. As a conservative watchdog group, it has launched campaigns targeting companies it perceives as prioritizing progressive agendas over their customers. For instance, in response to Bud Light’s partnership with a transgender influencer, Consumers' Research initiated a “Woke Alerts” campaign to inform consumers about companies' political stances. The organization's efforts have played a significant role in holding corporations accountable and encouraging a return to customer-focused values.
So, if this trend is truly reversing, what should we celebrate instead?
Rather than centering our national pride around identity groups or political campaigns, we should be celebrating the things that actually hold America together — faith, family, freedom, and community.
Faith, not in the empty slogans of corporate human resources departments, but in a higher purpose. Faith that grounds our moral order and has shaped the conscience of our country from the beginning. One can’t help but think of Matthew 15:8: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
RELATED: Rainbow rebellion: How Christians can take back what Pride Month stole
Family, the foundational institution that no government program can replace. It’s within the home that virtue is taught, character is formed, and citizens are raised.
Freedom, especially the freedom to speak the truth — even when it’s unpopular — and to live according to conscience without fear of cancellation or coercion. The most inclusive flag in the land is Old Glory.
And community — real, local, lived-in community — where Americans help each other not because of corporate campaigns, but because it’s the right thing to do.
We know better. These are the values that deserve celebration. These are the virtues that built this country. And if corporate America is finally pulling back from the cultural fray, maybe it’s time for all of us to recommit — not to branding campaigns, but to the timeless truths that made America strong in the first place.
Pride Month 2025 isn’t just about what’s changing on Madison Avenue. It’s about what’s possible on Main Street. Let’s use this moment not to divide but to unify — by celebrating what we’ve always had reason to be proud of.
Elon Musk triumphant as IBM, Disney, and Comcast end yearlong advertising boycott on X
Big-name brands have ended their advertising boycott against Elon Musk's X after approximately a year of refusing to support the platform.
Comcast, Discovery, Disney, IBM, Lionsgate Entertainment, and Warner Bros. have resumed their ad spending on X, with Musk thanking CEO Linda Yaccarino for her work on bringing the companies back onto his platform.
"Just want to say that we super appreciate major brands resuming advertising on our platform!" Musk wrote. "Thanks [Linda Yaccarino] and the whole X team for your hard work in restoring confidence in our platform and ensuring that advertising content only appears where advertisers want it shown."
In November 2023, the brands mentioned above (along with Apple) dialed back their ad campaigns after claims their branding appeared next to "anti-Semetic content" and "hate speech," AdWeek reported.
'The censorship apparatus is coming to an end.'
Without the major companies, brands like Karma Shopping and Canles Shoes became the top ad-buyers on X. Overall, ad revenue dropped by a reported 98% year over year, but Musk remained principled in his cause.
"I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it," Musk told CNBC at the time.
Political commentator Ian Miles Cheong called the boycott a failed effort "the moment Donald Trump won the election."
"The censorship apparatus is coming to an end, and the advertisers know it. Beyond that, advertisers can undoubtedly see the strength of X, and depriving themselves of profits for the sake of sticking it to Elon clearly doesn't work," Cheong added.
— (@)
The new report comes after claims in September that there would be a mass exodus of advertisers from the platform over concerns of "extreme content" that could damage brand images.
However, that was after X announced a lawsuit against major advertisers in August, following a House Judiciary Committee report that pointed to an illegal boycott against the company.
The World Federation of Advertisers, which represents some of the world's largest companies and advertisers, was accused of directly organizing boycotts and targeting disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize them.
BlazeTV host James Poulos said the smoke surrounding the advertising conflict was cleared once the nature of the report was revealed.
"Rather than mild-mannered normies afraid of controversial content on X, advertisers operate as a cartel of far-left propagandists, reaping profits from taxpayers on government contracts while conspiring to silence free speech at odds with their radical ideologies."
Concurrently, many left-wing celebrities are announcing plans to leave X. This includes MSNBC's Joy Reid, who said she doesn't want to support the platform, and ex-CNN host Don Lemon, who claimed he disagrees with the new terms of service.
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