The culture war seeps into everything.
Your meal is political. So is the other person's meal.
Politics is polarized. It is also ubiquitous. Of course, people have their media silos in a binary choice of Republican and Democrat, now re-cast as Trump and anti-Trump. Fox is Trump; nearly everyone else is "mainstream news" and therefore more or less "fake" and anti-Trump.
Partisan media silos are widely acknowledged, although it is complicated in actual practice. Sinclair Broadcasting is the nation's largest owner of TV stations, and the corporation is pro-Trump. However their affiliates are CBS, NBC, and ABC stations. That means they broadcast Steve Colbert poking at Trump. They also sponsor conservative political commentators which they insist be inserted into station broadcasts.
Viewers choose what to watch. So, too, with vehicles. Pickup trucks are Trumpish; hybrid cars are anti-Trump. I observe more "Trump-2020" bumper stickera on a full size pickup trucks than I do "Coexist" stickers. Still, car dealers carefully avoid politics. They are in business to sell and service vehicles, not do politics.
Chick-fil-A is an exception, and it is working for them. They know where they stand in the culture war. Its founder was a Baptist and open and public about being a cultural conservative. The restaurant closed on Sunday and still does. It openly says the corporation stands for traditional, Christian values. It has a foundation that openly supports anti LGBTQ issues. Dan Cathy, the CEO and son of the founder, says in radio interviews that marriage must be between a man and a woman. "I think we are inviting God's judgement on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you do as to what constitutes marriage."
Liberal activists have called for boycotts of the restaurant. They didn't stop with saying people shouldn't eat there. They also protested their presence in publicly owned facilities, e.g. airports, in culturally liberal cities.
 |
| Guyer |
Today's Guest Post says this is a mistake for the left. People like to have choices. They also like what is served at a Chick-fil-A.
Thad Guyer travels a great deal in his work as an attorney representing whistleblower employees. He has a national--actually international--practice, which he carries out from whereever he has his laptop computer. Recently he traveled from Vietnam to Washington DC, via Charlotte, North Carolina.
Guest Post by Thad Guyer
Notice the Chick-fil-A line at Charlotte Airport, American Airline's big left coast hub. People fly to NYC from SEA, PDX, and SFO through Charlotte.
I see these big lines for Chick-fil-A everywhere I go including big city shopping malls. This is the ptoblem with politicsl correctness and activists trying to cancel leases or sales of the unwashed masses. Organized boycott is fine for consumer choice. But leftist efforts to cancel the choice of others engenders backlash and seldom succeeds anyway.
Pete Buttiedge rose after he attacked progressive dogma to cancel people's medical insurance and choice. Beto folds after promising to cancel religious tax exemptions and gun owners' rights to keep whst they already own and have in gun safes.
Trump frames impeachment as a cancelling of the 2016 election, which was promised and threatened by Democrats the day after the election, and years before his Ukraine telephone call. You can feel the defiance in the CfA line, filled with people holding winter coats in transit to/from blue cities.
Note to Southern Oregon readers: Tomorrow's post will be a brief update on Judge Greif. Her text messages of two years ago include a frank and amusing warning about a Mail Tribune op-ed that would run the next day. She had gotten a heads up, presumably from someone at the newspaper, that it would appear.
7 comments:
Regressives eat unhealthy food.
Got it!
Mr. Guyer writes as if customers had to muscle their way through protesters at an airport, to grab a burger from Chick-fil-A. The boycotts of Chick-fil-A are basically non-existent. This article from March lays out the issue much better than I can. https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/03/chick-fil-a-boycott-liberals-forgot-chicken-too-good.html
A Chick-fil-A will be opening soon in Medford. Like the bevy of other chain restaurants that have opened up in Medford the past few years, I would expect it to be successful. Not because of any culture war, but because they produce a product that people want.
A few years back while traveling thru MFR I noticed that all the TVs in the terminal were tuned to Fox News. I wrote a letter to the airport administrator about this. My concern was not that I was offended. My concern was that it might be a turn off to business people flying in from elsewhere who could be considering making valuable business investments in Southern Oregon. Folks from California looking at Southern Oregon as an investment opportunity might, if even subconsciously, find it to be a turn off. I was advised by the airport administration that they had no say in what stations the TVs were tuned to. That, in fact, they were controlled by Adroit Construction, who had paid for the service and therefore controlled the units.
It occurs to me that Adroit would value potential investors over airing their own political preferences, but they may know something I don’t about visiting investors.
Interesting, Art Baden. To my knowledge, Adroit Construction is awarded most City of Medford contracts, on no bids.
I have this on authority from a major competitor who would have liked the opportunities.
Check your property tax bill to see how much you spend supporting COM. Add in your monthly utility bill, an undeclared tax.
The Chamber of Commerce executives (Brad Hicks and John Watt) rule Medford and Jackson County from behind the scenes. Adroit is one of the 800 lb gorillas in the Chamber. The Chamber ensures that Adroit gets every government contract, just like Ogden, Roemer, Wilkerson architects gets every government contract. Medford is run by organized crime. That's why the establishment wants a new jail. Adroit will build it. That's why the Medford City Council wants a new aquatic center. Adroit will build it. Adroit builds everything. Haven't you ever wondered why they get every government contract? They own the government and the politicians.
One theory is that many of the successful and powerful players and firms in the County may just be paying lip service to the idea of economic development here. Significant new private investment means significant new players competing with the current elites who some of this blogs posters believe have a choke hold on the local political scene. Following that logic (or conspiracy theory, depending on your perspective), why would the County’s preeminent construction, architectural, legal firm et al want to see the current economic climate change? Economic growth brings economic competition. If you have an ostensive monopoly, why encourage competition? An entrenched mediocrity will always prefer to operate as a big fish in a small pond. Keeping the pond small may be in the true interest of those who some believe are the cartel controlling our local political and economic environment. But what do I know? I’m just an old, white corporatist!
I hope Kevin Stine revisits this thread.
Post a Comment