In 1946 Samuel Truett Cathy - Founder of Chick-fil-A opened his first slop house in Atlanta, Georgia. Truett was a reasonably good Southern Baptist and took his religious views seriously, in that he lived the life every day - not just Sunday during Church. Truett and his Bible thumping brother Ben decided to spread the good news about fast food chicken sandwiches, and as of 2012 the privately held chain does over one billion a year in sales. That is a lot of chicken. It's also a lot of dinero. Truett has been in the big bucks chicken business for over 60 years and he's continued to subsidize the Southern Baptist version of Christianity with the profits. Not too surprisingly his son has moved up to a management position within Big Daddy's company.
The day to day number one man at Chick-fil-A is Dan T. Cathy - President and Chief Operating Officer, but instead of being a reasonably good Southern Baptist I get the strong feeling that Dan Cathy is a good Southern Baptist. Which is pretty easy given Big Daddy's fortune and generosity. In other ways, maybe not so easy. I probably couldn't keep it up for long with my appetite for drinking and dancing - I even play cards, and that's right up there with some other sin that I can't remember.
The thing is that Chick-fil-A is a privately held company. That means that Chick-fil-A is run like a monarchy; the King's word is law. The official Chick-fil-A monarchy is, like all monarchies, a closed society. You can be born into it or marry into it, and that's about it. But no matter how you get into it, by order of His Majesty the King, you have to espouse those traditional Southern Baptist morals every single day of your life. So it should come as no surprise that Chick-fil-A doesn't have many LGBT honor society members working the register these days. Hell, I bet you can't find three collecting a paycheck in the entire chain.
I think LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender but given my own lifestyle preferences I'm not one hundred percent sure about that, and I'm not about to ask the guys down at the bar. I, after all, would rather remain silent and have them think I'm a real dumb-ass rather than open my big yap and have them know for sure. Plus there's the fact that one of them might be bright enough to wonder aloud just why I want to know, which would lead to speculation, then jokes and insinuations about sexual orientation, and eventually the discussion would turn ugly and adjourn to the parking lot where I'd leave some son-of-a-bitch leaking in the alley. So I'll just avoid all that.
So the problem started when Dan Cathy, AKA Prince Cathy and Heir to the Throne, rared back on his heels, opened his fat yap to the press and said that Chick-fil-A is a by-God good, upstanding Christian company where everyone believes in Biblical marriage and anyone who doesn't like it can just step outside and we'll talk about it. Which is a pretty safe statement to make to the press since Fred Reed went into semi-retirement. Fred probably wouldn't have bothered to step outside. Fred probably would have hit him with a beer bottle.
But that's not what happened here. For what ever reason that I cannot imagine, every single twinkle toed door knob sucking bull dyke fearing light in the loafers politically minded joy boy in town chipped his nail polish, ran outside and howled at the moon.
They were joined by the girls, none of whom offered to demonstrate anything or provide visuals appealing to male spectators. Oh well. Sensing chum in the water, commercial media grabbed the story and ran with it. Then the politicos got involved, and Mike Huckabee publicly suggested that those people who want to support Chick-fil-A and the freedom of speech should show up at their local Chick-fil-A restaurant on Wednesday and have lunch.
The lines at Chick-fil-A stretched for blocks (photos and stories New York Daily News - On 'Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,' supporters crowd the fast food chain's locations as anti-gay stance is under fire and Orange County Register - Customers flock to support Chick-fil-A restaurants). People waited for over an hour in broiling summer heat to spend less than ten bucks for lunch at a restaurant that was operating way past maximum capacity. They did this as part of an official protest against all that commercial media, the LGBT rights activists and all those professional blowhards who were throwing mud at Chick-fil-A and promising a life long boycott.
Boycotting a place is easy. All you have to do is drive past it and go somewhere else. Active support is something else again. This demonstration was not organized and it was suggested on very short notice. Mike Huckabee is not a terribly popular public figure. Yet the results are easy to see, and in the wake of this support protest the liberal commercial media is chasing its tail and wondering just what the fuck to do now, because they know and the Right Wingnuts know that it is very, very hard to get this kind of response from the general public. Usually it takes a nuclear explosion or something.
My conclusion is that anyone running for office who ignores this event or tries to fight it is not going to be in office much longer - or at all. This is a major watershed event, and it illustrates what we the people really believe in contrast to what commercial media wants us to believe and what our arrogant, remote elected officials actually think we believe.
Given the Ayatollah Obama's views on gay marriage I kind of think Himself had better tell his wife to start packing. The lease may be up in November.
1 comment:
"Given the Ayatollah Obama's views on gay marriage I kind of think Himself had better tell his wife to start packing. The lease may be up in November."
If only
Nice post, Thanks.
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