The Fingerbone of St. Johnny of Cash, September 2nd, 2024. Introduction

So last week a marketing video for New St Andrews set off a firestorm and, true to form,

I have a few words of response, contextualization, and explanation.

Whenever I'm tired of looking like I'm defending chattel

slavery, I like to switch it up in order to look like I'm a full-throated advocate of cussing.

That's just what I do. Here's the ad if you haven't seen it yet.

First, what it was. The controversial part of the ad turned out to be the place where we said

that we wanted to attract young men who would be willing to hoist the jollyroacher or use Johnny Cash's favorite finger when confronting idolatry.

First, the metaphor of the Jolly Roger, I hasten to clarify, did not mean that we wanted to attract men whose deepest

desire was to raid ships and towns in the Caribbean in search of rum, wenches, and gold.

Metaphores can be difficult and we regret any confusion or ambiguity this may have caused.

But back to Johnny's finger. The image that accompanied this was a picture of Johnny Cash's face and the very tip of the finger in question, followed by a nanosecond zoom out shot of Johnny, finger, and all. This was video's method of making the point without doing what

Rick Rubin had done on behalf of Johnny himself back in 1998, which was to run that same picture

as a full page and very static ad in Billboard magazine.

We thought it needed to be softened or muted or framed,

just like other forms of circumlocution do.

He told me to F-off or to use asterisk for most of an offensive word,

e. g-f- Astra, you know.

Or to employ the preface of language alert or even by saying F&N on the blim blam.

This was the video equivalent of that kind of thing, very carefully and deliberately

done. So this was not a call for young men who cuss out their moms on the regular, but rather

for the kind of man who would be willing to go there with Baffamette if his idolatrous provocations

...