Tears of The Left had an Ultra Right problem

If you don’t know what that subject line means, congratulations on living well. Alas, I must ruin your blissful ignorance. Tears of The Left (ToTL) is an anti-woke bourbon brand that endorsed by such cultural titans as Rob Schneider and Kevin Sorbo. It’s a color-by-numbers conservative pander-brand, in other words—so much so that just a few months ago I used it as a case study in the anatomy of a right-wing booze grift. As it turns out, ToTL might be even truer to this hoary genre than it initially appeared: it appears to be struggling to send people the whiskey they paid for.

📬 Good post alert

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🚛 The “payday loan” theory of RNDC’s new financing

Last Friday, the chief executive of Republic National Distributing Co. sent a memo to employees announcing the firm had "finalized an agreement with our lenders to provide significant additional funding" that "creates a pathway to success for RNDC." You can read the entire message—which I obtained from several current workers at the flailing mega-wholesaler who have been granted anonymity to protect their livelihoods—here.

(As ever, if you know more, bang my line: [email protected] via email, or dinfontay.11 via Signal.)

There are a few ways to think about this development, which was first reported by the my colleague Jessica Infante at Brewbound. The first way to take it is at face value: RNDC is fine, nothing to see here, please carry on! You’re welcome to read it that way, I guess. But based on my reporting on the firm and its track record of communication over the past 12 months, I have a hard time buying that.

🕊️ RIP Whiskey Fridays, we hardly knew ye

Apropos of the skeet above: they say you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, and, well, Whiskey Fridays with CBS’ resident shit-eater Tony Doukopil is definitely gone. Last week, after Zeteo’s Prem Thakker published images showing a CBS Evening News set mocked up with a Jack Daniel’s sponsorship placement, I contacted The Brown-Forman Corporation to find out whether it was involved in whatever embarrassing new misadventure Bari Weiss and her clown-shoed anchor were cooking up at the Trump regime’s favorite network. The spirits conglomerate told Fingers it most certainly was not. Shortly thereafter, a CBS spokesperson insisted to the New York Post’s media reporter Alex Steingrad that this was all just a hypothetical anyway:

Seems a bit like they doth protest too much, and making this statement to the New York Post, a notorious right-wing rag, is a bit of a flag. But regardless, it gone, and with it, Jack Daniel’s best shot at reaching the nine slack-jawed rubes still tuning into Vichy CBS. Alas. Maybe the real Whiskey Fridays was the friends we met along the way.

🗳️ Cast your vote for Buzzwords of The Week of The Year 2025

This is the final day of voting for the best (worst) Buzzwords of The Week from Q2, Q3, and Q4 of 2025! Once polling is closed, the four semi-finalists will square off for Buzzwords of The Week of The Year honors (?) at the end of the month. Make your voice heard and help select each quarter’s most polished turd before it’s too late! Vote now!

📲 The best Fingers meme ever and/or lately

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