Some things change:

I never thought I’d see the day when I would walk into a gun shop wearing a mask and not be taken at gunpoint.

Some things remain the same:

The Land O’ Lakes people eradicated the Native American from their label, but kept her land and her lake…

52 COMMENTS

  1. This is not a news story I’ve followed, but it smacks of excessive political correctness, though I don’t know who’s pushing it.

    Still, what’s wrong about depicting an attractive Native American woman on a food package? All other races are featured in commercial ads and products.

    • The attractive “native American” did not have “Native American” features, she looked European.
      The image on the butter packaging drew me to buy Land O Lakes butter once. It was okay but the store brand was also.

  2. Meanwhile, Mas, back in the “Land O’ Sand” (Arizona), at least one bank requests that a customer make an appointment before being admitted into the bank building. I didn’t connect that with wearing masks until I read your comment on MN (?) just now. In Arizona we have had the luxury of being allowed to wear our firearms into banks without setting off alarms. I have never heard of an actual successfully unadjudicated AZ armed bank robbery. Furthermore, I have always maintained that no one has ever been known to make a bank deposit at gunpoint, so why worry? Guessing that the bank is feeling some nervousness about lack of facial recognition. Until the current bat virus craze I have never heard of anyone wearing a gun and a mask at the same time while making a deposit, which I now sometimes do. I just feel safer approaching the bank when Mr. Ruger is with me, plus I don’t want to breathe on anybody. Yes, the more that things change, the bat crazier life gets.

    • Steve, I doubt its the armed men making deposits they fear. I would guess its the armed ones making withdrawals… particularl those made without going through the trouble of referenceing any specific account as the source.

      Funny, but I’ve never seen any metal detectors at any of the banks/credit unions I’ve ever been in. Except in Montana any backing business I’ve ever done was accomplshed whilst I was duly armed. No one but me knew, and no machines to squeal on me.

      • Friend Tionico, the bank personnel will be the ones who set off alarms, possible silent devices. Furthermore, bank employees usually don’t present much of a direct robbery threat, although short-changing might occasionally happen. Lurkers outside the bank might be the most likely suspects. At least once I encountered a suspicious man approaching and addressing me from behind at a walk-up ATM. I turned to face him and put my right hand behind me. He backed off and went away. One day soon after that a murder occurred at that spot. Another time I had the bad luck to arrive at a different bank just after a paper-threat-based robbery had occurred. Lucky me, I shortly got to meet the local police chief and an FBI agent for interviews. I mentioned to the agent that recently at that bank’s ATM someone had told me that the machine had short-changed them. I then opined that the bank had thus committed a robbery. “Oh,” he said, “that happens all the time.” The worst an ATM has done to me so far has been to issue a $20 bill with a serial number torn off. The bank voluntarily replaced the $20 with a whole one.

      • I do and I love it.

        Go read his Auschwitz Report if you haven’t already. I have a copy on my blog.

        He is my hero because my great grandparents emigrated from Auschwitz in the early 1900’s.

    • CANOLA oil? Dontchya know that suff aint all that healthy for ya? Olive would be far better.. unless theyre using some adultarated form of the stuff. Just olan ol pure butter IS very healthy for you.

    • The person that heads Land O Lakes leans as far LEFT as you can go. During this past year’s gay pride month she? (Unsure of pronouns) hired artists to paint huge rainbows and unicorns on sidewalks and windows throughout the building and property. Not that there is anything wrong with that but what direction do you think that company’s political clout is thrown? Pro-gun or anything conservative? I think not. Buying my butter elsewhere.

  3. Funny how fashion changes.

    It was once thought unmanly to carry your piece concealed.
    Today, in most precincts, it’s deemed indelicate to carry openly.

    A mask was once deemed a near certain sign of ill-intent; like waring a black hat.
    Today, in IL, it’s deemed an indication that you are carrying concealed.

    • MarkPA,

      You are right about carrying concealed. If I am not mistaken, in the Old West it was believed an honest man carried openly, nothing to hide. A dishonest man, trying to fool others, hid his gun.

      I think a few Southern states recently had laws that guns could be carried in cars, but only if they were in plain view.

      • For several years one can carry any firearm in their vehicle in plain sight or concealed. This is with or without permit; an extension of the castle doctrine.

  4. Hi Mr Ayoob
    I think that I may have met you over thirty years ago at the L’Acadie Shooting Club in La Prarie.
    Quebec near Montreal. You were giving a Pistol Shooting Course on a weekend. I did not take it since I’m mainly a International Skeet shooter, but I’m sure my friends found it most helpful.
    Since I am part French, I just thought I would correct your sentence. We say: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.( accent marks have been omitted because this keyboard does not convert to French).
    Thank you for your fine article

  5. “The Land O’ Lakes people eradicated the Native American from their label, but kept her land and her lake….”

    Pretty much the way it was done the first time.
    Time to pick up some nice lakeshore property?

    • I ALWAYS enter a bank armed. So far I nve NEVER donned a mask of any sort unless I’ve been sandblasing, grinding painted surfaces, removing anti0fouling bottompaint from a boat…..

      the whole “masks” game is almost pure hokum. The ONLY situation where that helps at all is when a definitely infected person is about in publi,c a SURGICAL mask helps capture any droplets containing pathogens as they are EXHALED. By the time they’ve floated in the air long ejough to get from Patient A to you, the droplets are so fine they are not captured at any signficant rate in the N 95 masks. They do very little iway of keeping the wearer more safe.
      The homemade things, and the home handyman dust masks for sanding, etc, are not effecive t all against a virus. The masks are just one more prop in the political theatre we are now commanded to perform. About as useless as the “six foot” rule, nd “group sizes”, closed parks, lakes, trails, beaches.

    • Even if an appointment is not required, you might want to arrange one in order to get some advance VIP treatment from the bank. Another bank patron or two might be carrying, and looking to reenact the wannabe Good Samaritan bank scene from the movie “Hell and High Water.”

  6. I have lived in Florida most of my life and have seen many changes like no AC and now can’t do with out it, from farm land to tract housing, from dirt roads to super highways! The one that makes no sense at all to me is Land O Lakes removing the Indian maiden from their containers. That’s like removing the Indian Brave from the FSU logo or the Gator from the UF logo. If it offends you don’t buy it but don’t remove my memories!

    • Phil Richer,

      I’m sure you know it all comes down to money. If management believes a few customers will be offended, and not purchase the product, then the offending image has to go. Sad, but true.

      Buckskins look so good. If I could, I would wear buckskins like Jay Silverheels, Tonto, but with a coonskin cap.

  7. Sir, I watched you on Shooting Gallery yesterday with a group of gents over 55 years of age the show was great and your received an award just what was the award my hearing is not what it was and I couldn’t make out what was said. Have a great weekend and be safe and healthy.

      • I saw that episode also. Unfortunately, free-Covid pay-tier Gun shows are over now. I guess Frontier decided one free month was enough. But I agree with you Mas. There was a lot of high power talent shooting there. Im 63 and I would call third place “bragging rights”.

  8. PC. BS. Synonymous. When I was a kid no one thought twice about the Indian on the Land O Lakes brand. Now it is somehow racist. The word no longer has meaning.

    • Ten or fifteen years from now the wokescolds will start screeching that the Indians are being “scrubbed from history” or “denied their culture” and demand that the squaw be restored to her rightful place RIGHT NOW.

      Appeasement doesn’t solve anything, it just kicks the can down the road.

  9. You know Mas, in today’s world most of the nose art on World War 2 bombers and fighter planes would have been deemed “inappropriate” by the PC crowd.

  10. So I’m not the only one who feels that walking into a store (especially a liquor store) with a mask on is disconcerting.

  11. I saw this butter meme about keeping the land and the lake but getting rid of the Indian the other day and LOL’d. Very astute and appropriate.

    In case anyone wants it, the customer care number for Land O Lakes is 1 800 328 4155. Note they also own Purina Animal Nutrition, whose customer care number is 1 800 227 8941. I’m calling them and telling them I won’t be buying either their butter or their pet food due to their PC stance.

    In case anyone wants it, the customer care number for Land O Lakes is 1 800 328 4155. Note they also own Purina Animal Nutrition, whose customer care number is 1 800 227 8941. I’m calling them and telling them I won’t be buying either their butter or their pet food due to their PC stance.

    The folks in Illinois are concerned that the ‘must wear a mask’ order is in conflict with another law that says anyone carrying a gun is guilty of a crime. The state police tried to clarify the issue but didn’t really do so. And it turns out the Governor’s wife has been out of state at one of their vacation homes while everyone else has been confined to quarters for the most part. Geez, if liberals didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all!

  12. Isn’t it odd that, in the age of political correctness, we can no longer refer to a Minneapolis lake as “Lake Calhoun” because it was named to honor an individual who died in 1850. He was was V.P. of the U.S. and actually had the audacity to support slavery at a time when slavery in the U.S. was not the issue it has rightfully become. Apparently, that one issue has overcome anything else he may have done of positive value, then or now, so the lake and the streets around it have been renamed to the Indian origins; Bde Maka Ska. I can pronounce that properly. Can you?

    I am Native American. No less than those who would co-op the language as if words only mean what select people, distinguishable by race, ethnicity, or some other trait wish them to mean. I am a white, third generation, European descendant. That makes me no less “Native American” than someone of a heritage incorrectly referred to as “Indian” for over 500 years.

    For some inexplicable reason, an attractive Indian lass, (her name was Mia), is being removed from an arguably historic product label for political reasons. I would argue it’s existence no less complimentary and very likely parallel with Longfellow’s poem, both indigenous to Minnesota. I will miss Mia on my butter cartons. Also the Hamm’s bear in commercials, but that’s for another discussion.

    A wonderful prank was to razor cut the sides and bottom of the butter container Mia was holding and place a cutout of her knees from the other side of the container behind the liftable flap. Juvenile humor alert, viewer discretion is advised:

    https://youtu.be/r3jBATBQU9w

      • Wrangler Jane is too blonde for Land O Lakes. Maybe a beautiful young woman from the Heckowwee tribe dressed in a tiny buckskin bikini would be more appropriate.

  13. Back in the olden days, the image of Aunt Jemima on the maple syrup containers bearing her name was of a jolly heavyset black woman before the PC crowd forced the change to a much thinner black lady who looks like a lawyer or accountant and less appropriate for a grocery item. For me, food seems to taste better when prepared by a fat cook instead of a thin one. Besides, what did Indians have to do with butter? Cows didn’t exist in North America until they were brought over by European settlers. I don’t believe any Indians milked buffaloes to make butter. Just wondering.

  14. Those racist bastards! Removing this fine lady from their label simply because she was an American Indian! Would this have happened if she had been one of the “more favored” races? I think not. Land O’Lakes president and CEO Beth Ford described the move as realigning company packaging to reflect “the foundation and heart of our company culture—and nothing does that better than our farmer-owners whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes’ dairy products.” So does this mean that Mia’s image will be replaced with Bossie’s or Elsie’s? It is insulting and degrading to suggest that a cow is more worthy of representation than our early indigenous people. Someone needs to have a powwow with Land O’ Lakes! Time to break out the War Drums.

    • Land O Lakes needs to have a native American female on it’s packaging. If not the Indian woman, maybe they can put Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren’s picture on the label instead.

  15. Hi Mas
    I live on the west coast of Florida. I carry all the time, banks, stores, doctor offices.
    No one has ever told me to lock it up in the car. Walmart has a sign that says “no open carry”.
    Florida doesn’t allow open carry anyway.
    Regards,
    the old sarge

  16. I think someone else owns the Elsie trademark, so Land O Lakes is ah, out of luck.

    This is taking “sensitivity” to an absurd level.

  17. Maybe the old label tended to mislead they buyer into thinking the butter had been made by milking bison.

  18. Unfortunately, in Live Oak, FL a pawn shop “Gold Leaf Pawn” was held up by a man and woman wearing masks and gloves. The owner did not question their dress. He was subsequently shot and in critical condition. I believe the two perps have been caught.

  19. Over the past several years people have come to realize that the government’s war on saturated fats, started by a loud-mouth bully doctor who jumped to that conclusion with zero experimental data, was a horrible mistake. Heart disease went from rare to the leading cause of death. The mass-movement from margarine back to butter these recent years means that every dairy is making butter again. ~Twenty years ago Land-of-Lakes butter was the only game in town in most areas. They now have a lot of competition.

    So what do people and organizations do when they start losing? They go all-in politically correct hoping that will save them. Just like Harvey Weinstein announcing he would take on the NRA just after a rare episode when standards applied to liberals as well as to everyone else. There is a saying these days “get woke, go broke.”

  20. I have seen people OCing and wearing a bandanna mask. No one cares which shows the kind of place I live in. I haven’t seen anyone carrying a SAA though which to be correct, one should.

  21. Not for nothing, but I read the other day that the original artwork for the Land O’ Lakes Indian maiden logo was created by an Indian/native American gentleman.

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