Chris Rock Guilts Hollywood Into Buying Girl Scout Cookies: Brilliant

Atone via commerce, he told them, & raised $65K

Last night, Chris Rock beamed out at an assembly of movie-making royalty, all decked out in their fanciest clothes and ready for some self-congratulatory excitement, and told them they were racist. Not KKK-racist, necessarily; more like sorority racist.

At some point, the producers stopped cutting to the audience for reaction shots, presumably because people were so uncomfortable with what they were hearing. Later, though, Rock gave them an opportunity to expiate their sins to some degree. He brought his daughter’s girl scout troop in and told the crowd, implicitly, that instead of saying 10 Hail Marys, they could buy five boxes of Thin Mints.

Those guilty, overpaid Hollywood liberals probably felt so bad that he could have used the opportunity to sell them anything. But the harmless products of earnest — and occasionally embattled — young businesswomen? That’s suiting your message to your audience with a vengeance.

Some people, it should be said, only gave golf claps:

Oscar audience raises $65k for cookies. Can we raise $100k for folks poisoned by their own water? Text JUSTICE to 83224! #JusticeForFlint

 — @avaetc

FAIR. At any rate, $65,000 worth of Girl Scout cookies is impressive. Though it is not a new Guinness record. That title is held by a group in Arizona that sold $355,000 in one day. And those entrepreneurs were canny too:

After submitting a request, Thornton told ABC News that Guinness opened the category of cookie sales for the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council with the condition that they break the $75,000 mark in a 24-hour period.

With Super Bowl XLIX taking place at the University of Phoenix stadium, the scouts took full advantage of the tourism and potentially new customers — selling roughly 88,756 boxes to Thin Mint and Tagalong-lovers face-to-face.

“Boothing is a major way for the girls to make sales,” Thornton said. “We worked with grocery stores and retailers. For Super Bowl weekend we focused on going to restaurants in the area, as well as Cityscape, which was hosting a Super Bowl event. We also had a huge car show in town.”

❤ ❤ ❤

$355,000 over 24 hours comes out to an average of about $15,000 an hour. If Rock had applied in advance for a new Guinness category for the most cookies sold in a much more limited amount of time, he could have one for the record books. Still, I doubt anyone — his daughter’s very successful troop or all those fancy Hollywood types, lolling on their couches right now, their puffy hungover faces crusted in last night’s makeup and clouds of Samoa dust — is complaining.

Well, maybe the Catholic Church, which at least in St. Louis had warned its parishioners away from the treats. What with the cookie extravaganza and Spotlight taking Best Picture, the church did not have a great night.

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