Random Thoughts on Chick-fil-A

Here are some disparate thoughts on this brouhaha (fun word). The thoughts are disparate because this is not an issue that is easily reducible to black and white, good versus bad. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject and no clear thoughts have crystallized. I tried to make a unified thesis--something about resentment--but I failed. More and more I am learning that this is the reality of political issues: they are all far more complex and less easily reduced to bumper sticker slogans than most people would like to believe and how most politicians treat them. So here are some ramblings. 

 

• I have been hesitant to write on this subject, relying on others to do most of the talking for me. And much, of course, has been written and said already. In general I feel as if it was way overblown, on both sides. I am instinctively nervous about linking so integrally our economic decisions and our political views. Obviously, people are free to do this, but it worries me that we are so in the throes to consumerism that the type of fried chicken sandwich that we eat or the type of cheap cookie we dunk in our milk makes a political statement. But I also understand that such statements constitute a large part of whatever voice it is that we have in the political arena. Not to sound pessimistic, but in the current political climate, our checkbooks could conceivably carry more weight than our votes.

 

• And I don't necessarily have a problem with people holding the political views of the CEO of an organization against the entire organization. This is something all companies have to take into consideration: if your leader is a lightning rod he is going to alienate potential customers. I just don't know that I would ever do it. I don't care what the CEO of some company I buy pasta noodles or orange juice or shoelaces from thinks about the size of government or gay marriage or Obamacare. Maybe I should. Maybe it is weak of me to not, but I am just trying to not be mad all of the time and to keep some activities separate. Does Dan Cathy's belief in traditional marriage infect the way he runs his company? Maybe, but I doubt it. If it did, we surely would have had an expose on the subject by now. And if we look at the banal nature of his original comment, it makes me wonder how anyone could give a tinker's damn about it. From some commentary you would think he was frothing at the mouth, spewing vile vulgarities, demeaning homosexuals everywhere. But this is what he said:

“We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

Grab your torches and clubs. 

 

• I read an article by a Christian man who I respect complaining that if Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, was a Muslim who had made comments to a Muslim publication espousing a conservative Muslim belief about gay marriage that there is no way it would have incited the furor that a conservative Christian espousing conservative Christian beliefs just did. And he is right, in a sense. But this thought exercise is impossible, in another, more real, sense. Can anyone imagine a Muslim CEO of a major corporation in our country? Perhaps one is out there, but in terms of privilege and power in the United States it is specious to claim that Muslims hold more of either than conservative Christians. Besides, I could remind everyone of the conservative response to the proposed Muslim community center in the same neighborhood as the World Trade Center. Did this show the same strict fealty to free speech rights and freedom of religion we so desperately want to claim as we find ourselves on the defensive?

 

• Have you seen the video of this douchebag who really spoke truth to power belittled a fast food employee? Apparently it cost him his job, which I don't like, but it was pretty stupid. His giddiness as he drives up to the window to get his free water, his speculation that some college students are staging a sit-in, the self-righteous smugness of his verbal assault on this poor woman (who I believe, according to the muted Fox News clip I saw on the treadmill this morning, is receiving her beatification en route to Joe the Plumber conservative icon sainthood) are all indicative of the level of self-righteous smugness generally on display in this affair.

 

• But guys like liberal douchebag, and guys like Christian handwringer complaining that Muslims get better treatment in this country, are all part of what worries me so much about this event: the terrible resentment evident on both sides. The liberal side in the gay marriage debate has successfully framed everyone who disagrees with them as motivated solely by hate. Shaming into submission is the name of the game and it is proving very successful. But it is also a polarizing strategy. It leaves many (still 50% of our country) confused as to why what has been the norm in Western society for several hundred years all of a sudden means they are hateful bigots. And they resent this implication, and the belittling of their faith, and the restriction of free speech they see coming (and, I might mention, this threat seems quite real). And the culture wars continue to escalate, with both sides becoming further entrenched and the rhetoric further degenerating.