"OMG Stop Freaking Out!!!" is a Bad Response to Right-Wing Freak-Outs

If you can't say something principled, don't say anything at all

It is my firm opinion that the fuckability of M&Ms is not the most vital issue facing our nation. Honestly: It might not even be in the top five. But you’ve probably heard that an uproar around character design has led Mars candies to discontinue their M&M characters. That news ripped across yesterday’s Discourse like it was the Kennedy assassination; if Twitter was a newspaper, then this would have been yesterday’s edition:

To summarize the issue for any Neanderthals who haven’t been following the news: Last year, M&M’s announced a “makeover” for their “spokescandies”. Though nobody asked, Mars, Inc. explained that the CGI M&M’s who hawk B-grade chocolate on TV were being changed to be more “inclusive” and “reflective of modern society”. In a Gandhi-esque turn of phrase that surely brought a tear to the eye of anyone across the globe who yearns for justice, the M&M’s press release declared: “As the world changes, so do we.”

Which is to say: The Green M&M would no longer wear fuck-me pumps. In fact, she was now just “Green” — no longer “Ms. Green” (was she married to the guy from Clue?) — and she and the other female M&Ms would team up as a “force supporting women, together throwing shine and not shade.” It’s unclear to me what came of that project — if the M&Ms succeeded in, say, reducing the prevalence of female genital mutilation, I am unaware of such progress.