Recently, some of you may have noticed the Cracker Barrel restaurant and gift store chain changed its logo. They removed the picture of the so-called “Old Timer,” who was meant to represent the chain’s southern-style comfort food and old-fashioned country store feeling, and left that space blank to represent the pit of fiery eternal damnation loud with the shrieks of the condemned into which the chain had fallen by supporting child sex changes, drag shows for children, and racist hiring practices.

The move was supposed to help the struggling chain’s finances by ensuring that no conservative customer entered one of their venues ever again. Those alienated customers would be replaced by large numbers of imaginary progressives just waiting for an old-fashioned, down-home, southern-style restaurant catering to pedophilia-adjacent homosexuals with a hankering for crunchy fried chicken.

But Right-wing activists loudly protested the logo change, and when it turned out the new imaginary customers were paying for their imaginary meals with imaginary money, Cracker Barrel was forced to replace the Old Timer in the empty space, in the hopes they could keep their usual customers and avoid the eternal shriek-filled pit of sin-tortured souls the empty space represented.

Now, at this point, the flaming shriek-filled pit of sin-tortured souls known as the American news media, began to express their opinions, which were all the same opinion, because all the American news media’s opinions are decanted from a single brain, which is kept on a lightning-lashed altar in the fog-shrouded cave-dwelling of Chernabog, who was the demon from Bald Mountain in Disney’s Fantasia, before he left to take a job in Disney’s animation department.

The opinion of the news media was that conservatives were oh-so-very silly to make such a big fuss over a meaningless logo change at a failing chain restaurant, and how far, oh how very far, American culture had fallen from those golden days when real intellectuals like Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley exchanged sparkling ideas by screaming slurs and threatening to punch each other in the face, while the Left swarmed over our institutions like locusts, devouring everything from Christianity to the First Amendment. Just how stupid could these Fox-News-Watching Neanderthals be that they would waste their energies trying to cancel an innocent restaurant that was simply trying to take their customers’ money to fund actions their customers found contemptible?

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And I thought to myself: Oh, American news media, how right you are! Who cares about these little meaningless changes in the culture? In fact, just for fun, I would like to suggest a few meaningless cultural changes of my own.

For instance, how about conservatives buy the rights to the gay situation comedy “Will and Grace” and reboot the show, but this time, Will embraces Catholicism, and hilarity ensues as gay Will struggles with his physical desires in order to live a life in keeping with his faith. I’m sure the elite news media wouldn’t mind a meaningless little culture change like that one tiny bit.

What about color-blind casting? The current rules are, it’s okay to have Jesus Christ portrayed by a black woman, but it’s very bad to have a deaf character portrayed by an actor who can hear. So how about, as a change of pace, we have Jesus Christ portrayed by a Jewish actor who’s deaf, and when the left says, “Hey, he’s supposed to be a black woman,” the actor can say, “What? I couldn’t hear you! I’m deaf!” I’m sure the media wouldn’t complain about that at all.

Or, I know. Let’s reboot the hit 1970’s slavery drama “Roots,” only in this version, instead of a white man heading into the African interior to capture slaves, the white slaver just waits in his ship like in real life until the black Africans bring their black slaves to him so he can take them to a country where hundreds of thousands of white men will ultimately die to free them, about fifty years before white imperialists force their African colonies to free their slaves as well. I’m sure the news media would love that fresh, original take on an old favorite. 

In fact, just for giggles, let’s change all the Left’s favorite franchises so that they represent something the Left truly despises: the American people.

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This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “The Andrew Klavan Show.”

Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, After That, The Dark, is now available for Pre-Order. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that thousands of foreign troops could be deployed to his country under post-war security guarantees, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin said Moscow would regard them as legitimate targets to attack.

Their comments underlined the gulf between Kyiv and Moscow as Western pessimism mounts over prospects for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly, with U.S. President Donald Trump expressing growing frustration with Moscow by saying Russia appeared “lost” to “deepest, darkest China.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that 26 countries had pledged to provide post-war security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air.

Macron initially said those countries would deploy to Ukraine, but later said some of them would provide guarantees while remaining outside Ukraine, for example, by helping to train and equip Kyiv’s forces.

“It is important that we are discussing all this (security guarantees) … it will definitely be in the thousands (of troops), not just a few,” Zelensky said after meeting Antonio Costa, a senior European Union official, in western Ukraine.

Russia has long said one of its reasons for going to war in Ukraine was to prevent NATO from admitting Kyiv as a member and placing its forces in Ukraine.

“Therefore, if some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction,” Putin told an economic forum in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok.

“And if decisions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop,” the Russian president added.

Trump’s efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine have included holding talks with Putin, but he has been frustrated at his inability to resolve the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

He said this week he was “very disappointed” in Putin, and made clear on Friday that he was also upset by moves by Russia and India to improve ties with China as Beijing pushes a new world order. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi both met Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote in a social media post accompanying a photo of the three leaders together at Xi’s summit in China.

Trump said on Thursday that he would speak to Putin again in the near future. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday that he had no doubt that a meeting could be organised very quickly.

As Western pessimism mounts over peace prospects for Ukraine, the United States and Europe are discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over the war.

“We are ready to do more, we are working with the U.S. and other like-minded partners to increase our pressure, through further sanctions, direct and secondary sanctions. More economic measures to push Russia to stop this war,” Costa said after meeting Zelensky.

Costa, who is President of the European Council, said without giving details that “the work is starting in Brussels on the new sanctions package and a European team is travelling to Washington D.C. to work with our American friends.”

In Vladivostok on Friday, Putin denied that Russia’s economy was stagnating, despite a report from the central bank that suggests it is technically in recession.

(Additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Anastasiia Malenko, Bart Meijer, Olesya Astakhova, Maxim Rodionov, Darya Korsunskaya and Oksana Kobzeva, Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by William Maclean)