Pepsi was forced to pull an add that depicted Kendall Jenner diffusing a protest with a can of the company’s namesake soda, after an impressive bipartisan outcry.
While social justice warriors panicked that corporations were co-opting their protest culture to sell soft drinks, however, they chose to ignore the fact that Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi is one of their own: a dedicated progressive who bemoaned Donald Trump’s win (and gave thousands to Hillary Clinton), and has been pushing the company to be more socially conscious.
Out of the public eye, she’s also painfully hypocritical to her own left-leaning allies—and the Pepsi ad turning #BlackLivesMatter and “The Resistance” into a punchline is hardly the first example.
Nooyi was an early supporter of failed Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, giving so much time, energy and money to Clinton’s cause, she was mentioned as a “significant contributor” to Clinton’s efforts in Jon Podesta’s emails, published by Wikileaks.
Nooyi has been generous to Democrats, maxing out to Clinton’s campaign and giving thousands to local candidates. She was also generous to the Clinton Foundation, steering $7 million in Pepsi funds to a clean water initiative. She was rewarded with three personal contacts with Hillary Clinton while she was head of the State Department.
In December, Nooyi made headlines when she claimed that Trump’s victory made Pepsi employees weep uncontrollably at work, and made her terrified for their safety.
Pepsi was forced to apologize after Trump supporters threatened to boycott the company and its subsidiaries, claiming that Nooyi had mis-spoken and was merely quoting members of her workforce. Progressives cheered Nooyi for her commitment to “social responsibility” in the face of a dismal Trumpian future.
Just weeks later, leftist sweetheart Nooyi quietly joined Trump’s council of American CEOs—a risky move that has cost other progressive CEOs, notably the head of Uber. She rewarded herself for her commitment to making America great again by giving herself a 13% bump in pay, from $26 million to $29 million.
As CEO, Nooyi has also made a number of progressive “commitments” on behalf of the company, claiming that Pepsi has dedicated itself to making the world a cleaner, healthier place.
Meanwhile, PepsiCo is implicated in a study by the Rainforest Action Network for destroying a critical elephant habitat in Indonesia, and despite pleas from progressives, has failed to curb Pepsi’s sales of Mountain Dew, which health advocates claim is responsible for widespread disease in poor white communities.
Now, she’s again in hot water for selling out her political brethren, co-opting their commitment to social justice to sell soft drinks, and angering the woke, from the pages of Teen Vogue to the hallowed halls of Twitter. But these complainers definitely shouldn’t be shocked.
