Gonna be a lot of serious re-thinking going on in American bikerdom thanks to this revoltin’ development.

Woke Harley-Davidson CEO Compares Himself to the Taliban
A Harley-Davidson rider can be almost anyone, from an actual Hell’s Angel to your kids’ orthodontist. While the company has had its ups and downs, the bikes have long been an American icon for riders with “a passion for the motorcycle lifestyle, valuing freedom, adventure, and camaraderie,” according to marketing experts Keegan-Edwards.

There’s an image that goes along with the iconic bikes, and although I hardly need to tell you what it is, I will.

That image is: “Islamic terrorist.”

Wait…wut?

In a video just made infamous on Wednesday by Robby Starbuck, Harley-Davidson president, CEO, and Chairman Jochen Zeitz says he became the “Taliban” when he became a board member and says his job is to “take on capitalism and redefine it.”

“It’s important that we create new leadership,” Zeitz said, “that we get others to join a new thinking of a more sustainable business, of a better business that is more equitable in every respect. Socially, environmentally, and financially.”

(For what it’s worth, German-born Zeitz came to Harley from luxury goods company Kering, where he chaired the Sustainability Committee.) 

Customers have noticed Harley’s descent into wokeism since Zeitz came on board in 2020, but comparing his role to the Taliban must count as a new low.

Indeed so. I never thought I’d see the day, and fervently hoped never to. Actually, it never occurred to me that such a thing was even possible. But sad as it is, deeply as it pains me to have to say it, I can only agree with this guy’s assessment.

Pathetic. Dismaying. Maddening. Sickening. Infuriating. William Harley, Arthur and Walter Davidson, the great Jay Springsteen, Chocolate George, Billy “Chains” Flamont, and Sonny Barger are all rolling in their graves like a Shovelhead stroker crank assembly at 6k revs. In their eternal disquiet, they shan’t want for old-school-biker company.

I pray to Almighty God that the Wokester wreckers and despoilers will someday be made to pay for their vile predation, their iniquitous disrespect, their illimitable arrogance, and their callow gormlessness. In at least one way, the usurpers and besmirchers of the proud Harley-Davidson legacy almost certainly will pay ere the end, as Stephen goes on to explain.

David “Iowahawk” Burge, a man who knows more about American car culture than almost anyone else you’re likely to meet, just called it the “Possibly single most hilarious corporate self-immolation of all time.”

It is. And yet I’ve reached the point where I’m not sure I can laugh over the destruction of yet another American icon.

Your typical Harley buyer is going to become like your typical Bud Light buyer: increasingly scarce, driven away by a brand whose management despises them and their values.

I’m forced to conclude that when Zeitz says he’s going to change Harley-Davidson “in a sustainable way,” he means he thinks he can milk the company for several years before the loss of market value and brand cachet forces the board to kick his can to the curb.

It’d be nice to think so, perhaps, but I very much doubt that’s how the story will end. Far more likely, I think, that the Motor Company succumbs finally to the Wokester mind virus, goes out of business, and is forever lost except in the fond reminiscences of people like me.

H-D has very nearly gone under a good few times over its well over a century of sometimes precarious existence. How Kafka-esque it is, then, that after having somehow managed to stay afloat through so many trials and tribulations—WW2; Korea; Vietnam; the late-60s/early-70s calculated flooding of the US motorcycle market by cheap imports from Japan’s Big Four (Hon-duh, Kawasucki, Sudookey, Yammahammablamma); the ginned-up fuel “crisis” of the mid/late 70s; the rise of Safety Naziism in the 80s; the slow strangulation of individual liberty, independent-mindedness, and the quintessentially American spirit of rowdiness, defiance, and devil-may-care ebullience; the crippling effects of economic mismanagement, FederalGovCo meddling, and general malfeasance under D卐M☭CRAT regimes—it should be PC/Woke/Leftardism that ends up killing Harley off once and for all.

Update! Just remembered: for anyone interested in further perambulations from li’l ol’ moi on the Motor Company’s serially abusive, exploitative, and/or contemptuous relationship with its most loyal customers, check it, yo:

I love Harleys. I hate Harley-Davidson. That seems to be the consensus among old-school biker types these days, and they just might have themselves a point, too.

The Motor Company has always had its problems keeping its hardcore fan base happy. It seems to have a special talent for stepping on its own crank and pissing off (or on) the very people who did the most to make it the institution it is today. Ever since I’ve been riding H-D’s (since ‘82), I’ve heard complaint after complaint, and seen the Powers That Be at H-D making the sort of bonehead moves, again and again, that regularly generate those complaints like some sort of whacked-out fuckup factory.

What the hell could they have been thinking when they decided to sue independent bike shops that used “hog” or some variation thereof in their shop name? I’m sure most of you remember that one. It ain’t as if Harley thought that “hog” business up themselves, after all. But they sure were willing enough to glom onto the idea—and then have their slickee-boy lawyers claim it as their very own private property.

That’s the opening ‘graphs from one of my Leatherballs columns—the very first of ‘em, in fact—for the now-defunct Outlaw Biker rag, the rest of which column can be read here. Last time I checked, which I admit has been a minute, the Compleat Leatherballs Archives are exclusively available here at Ye Aulde CF Blogge and absolutely noplace else, seeing as how the OB site went the way of the diplodocus some years back.

I confess to being right proud of the work I produced under the Leatherballs nom de villein, every ounce as much as I am of my twenty-plus years of award-winning, justly (in)famous creative genius at this palatial websty, so I think it only meet and just that the LB catalog should at last find its Forever Home rat cheer at CF. Do check ‘em out if you haven’t yet; even if

1. You’ve never slung a leg over a leaky, squeaky, shaky, flaky ol’ Gnarley-D in your life
2. Have not even a tiny, inoffensive, easily-concealable tattoo
3. Don’t own any H-D dealership T shirts, engineer boots, chain-wallets, or black leather jackets
4. Don’t drink beer, chase loose women, participate enthusiastically in barroom brawls, and/or have never spent so much as a minute behind bars

…and ain’t about to subject yourself to any of those things at this late stage of the game, I think you’ll find the Leatherballs experience a highly enjoyable ride anyhoo.

Updated update! Just a few more thoughts on the topic I seem to have wandered off to: namely, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company’s perennially-contentious relationship with its core customer base.

For starters, it must be noted that, until the advent of what we hardcores, ironbutts, and/or scooter trash dubbed the RUBbies (ie, Rich Urban Bikers, mimicking the once-ubiquitous “Yuppie” (Young Urban Professional) moniker), long-haired, bearded, burly Hog jockeys were usually welcomed at licensed H-D dealerships with open arms. Most of the folks who owned, managed, wrenched, manned the parts counter or paint shop, or what have you were dedicated, serious riders themselves; as such, they didn’t have a problem with biker trash, even patchholders, habituating their dealerships, whether buying parts or apparel, checking out the new Harleys on the showroom floor, or just hanging out with other bikers to socialize and shoot the breeze.

Growing up on Jap dirt bikes as a child, then graduating to the street with a Kawasaki LTD 550, I had always been intimidated, sometimes even a little bit afraid, of those big, bad, smelly, dangerous Harley outlaw-biker types. And the one constant throughout my entire life has been this bizarre attraction to put myself right in the middle of any situation, company, or environment I was scared of. It was like a compulsion, really. That being the case, being a-skeered of them biker ruffians and all, what else could I do but start spending my Saturday afternoons at the long-gone H-D of CLT shop on S Tryon Street?

To my astonishment and lasting delight, those big, gruff-talking outlaws were without exception some of the friendliest, warmest, most big-hearted people I ever have met. They took this 19 year old, wet-behind-ears shavetail in like a long-lost brother or son, encouraging my interest, offering to help work on or wash my Kawasaki, telling road stories, just generally making the newb feel welcome and entirely at home.

About two years or so of hanging around and establishing my rightful place among Harley enthusiasts, I bought my first Harley: a 1983 Sportster XLH (for nonitiates, an XL prefix=Sportster; FX=Super Glide, Wide Glide, Disc Glide, Lowrider, etc; FL=full-on Hog of fame and legend). It marked the beginning of my lifelong love affair with the smaller, leaner, more nimble sibling to the Big Twins. And incredibly enough, I continued to find the bikers I was meeting more and more of to be unfailingly friendly, outgoing, and quite mellow. In fact, several of the friends I made back then remain close, dear friends to this very day; I just missed a call from one of them, my brother Dean, due to my being in the can taking a whiz. I’ll call him back tomorrow, no worries.

In sum, then, the antagonistic attitude, the officiousness and contempt, wasn’t something I ever encountered at dealerships, independent shops, or bars catering to those scary biker thugs. Except one: an H-D dealership in upstate Virginia, only a mile or thereabouts from I-81 near the West By God Virginia line. The name of the ‘burgh whence this asshole enclave got its name I won’t mention here; the account of that misadventure is recounted in full here. But yeah, trust me on this: assholes, every man in that sorry excuse for a Harley shop was a pluperfect asshole.

Years later, I was told by folks from the area who would know whereof they spoke that I didn’t catch the dealership assholes on an off day; according to these people, the staff of this dealership was renowned for being snotty, obnoxious, and unhelpful. I was informed that, should I ever find myself in similar straits in that locality in future, there was a really cool independent H-D shop not far away on the other side of the I-81 overpass, a small, honest establishment which had nary an asshole, prick, or douchenozzle on the payroll.

I’ve had neither dealings with nor friends at the Motor Company itself, in any of its manufacturing facilities, warehouses, or administrative offices, at any level. What I DO have, though, is several friends who operate or did operate independent Harley shops here in CLT, in ATL, in North Myrtle Beach SC, and in Brooklyn—hell, as I’ve mentioned lots of times here, I spent more than a few years working in a CLT shop owned and operated by my close friend Goose. And those shop-owners and employees have given me a real earful about HDMC’s vicious, adversarial approach towards them.

As I related in the last-linked Leatherballs essay above, their relationships with the H-D knobs consisted entirely of threats, lawsuits, and legal, written, and verbal harassment. I never will forget the day Goose spent a good fifteen-twenty minutes enduring a barely-coherent harangue demanding that Goose posthaste and forthwith remove H-D’s fabled bar & shield artwork from our sign or face consequences most dire. Goose just sat there holding the phone out from his ear snickering quietly to himself until he’d gotten tired of it, whereupon he cut in to calmly and collectedly inform the frothing ass-clown that, y’know, thanks for your concern and all, but the fact of the matter is our shop doesn’t even HAVE a sign, never has had, much less any bar-and-shield logo painted, etched, engraved, or embossed thereon.

Goose slammed the receiver down onto its cradle, and we both proceeded to laugh ourselves sick at the ludicrous H-D dweeb, after which interlude we put the shop Rottweiler in his crate, locked the doors, and walked up the hill to the diner to grab lunch, still laughing all the way HA HA HA HA!

Out of, what, four (five?) proprietors of two-or-three-man independent shops in the CLT area I know well (lemmesee now; threre’s Dean-O, Smiley, Ben, Max, Eyeball, and Country Earl, so six), every one of them called us over the next few days to warn us of the impending telephonic onslaught from H-D’s rep in the York, PA Sporty assembly plant, informing us they’d had the exact same hostile long-distance interaction that exact same week as we two incarcerees of dear old McElhattan’s Machine & Rod had enjoyed, probably with that exact same besuited H-D numbskull, all concluding the exact same way: a thunderous hangup, a moment’s stupefaction over what the blue-black blazing hell THAT was supposed to be, followed by prolonged paroxysms of rib-cracking hilarity. For months afterward all any of us had to say to put the others on the floor rolling, kicking, and crying for mercy, was to launch into his best Goose impersonation: “But…but…but sir, our shop doesn’t even HAVE a sign! Not ANY!!!”

Remember, now, these independent businesses were the very people who had kept Harley going through the nightmare days of the AMF (Annoying Manufacturing Flaw) regency extending from 1969 to 1985, during which Harley’s manufacturing and assembly plants were auto-afflicted by a whopping 50% factory defect rate—which, translated from the book-keeperese, means every other Harley-Davidson motorcycle built and shipped to dealerships was a fucked-up piece of utter, hopeless shite. Your pardon, please: a fucked-up piece of utter, hopeless, EXPENSIVE shite.

Notwithstanding the unpleasant realities, the diehards hung in there with Harley-D, put up with the wallet-exsanguinating cost of parts and labor to get the overpriced lemone Harley had saddled them with running again, whereupon it would break down for the fifty-hundredth time that summer, be re-loaded into the pickup, and go back to the shop for yet another extended stay while the riding-season days ticked agonizingly by. As this soap opera continues, the payment to H-D Motor Credit continues to come due the first of each and every month.

I’m glad I wasn’t a Harley owner back then. If I had been, the urge to just throw up my hands and say fuck it, call the credit agency to please please pretty please come haul this overpriced, chrome-bedecked boat anchor off for repossession, thus freeing me to go buy the rice-grinding Honda I wish I’da bought in the first muhhfuggin’ place would’ve been crushing, totally overpowering.

“Ride With Pride”? Yeh, sure; pride is kinda hard to maintain when you spend more time pushing than riding, unfortunately. “I’d rather push my Harley than ride Jap crap”? In the AMF era, that oath would be put to the sorest of tests. “Better a sister in a whorehouse than a brother on a Honda?” Better ask your sister how she feels about it before you make a firm commitment to anything, bub.

Hey, I got a million of ‘em, ladies and germs. Be sure to try the chicken cacciatore, it’s so delicious it’d make your sweet old mammina weep from pure joy. I’ll be here all week folks, do come back for tomorrow night’s show. Of all the classic bumper sticker lines about Harleys, though, my personal favorite was, is, and forever shall remain: “H-D actually stands for Hound Dog, because they both love riding around in the back of pickup trucks and they both leave puddles where they ain’t supposed to.”