So, amid all the furor over Chick-Fil-A being shockingly run by bigots and dolts is the fact that if you’ve been remotely tracking the company’s political course over the last few years, it’s not remotely shocking. Seriously, the only difference here is that this time they’re not backpedaling — instead they’re proudly embracing how ass-backwards they are.
But why is a fast-food chain that has assiduously avoided any sort of controversy even as they’ve tried to get away with supporting anti-gay causes suddenly in this deep of a quagmire? What exactly went wrong? Let’s do a quick review, shall we?
Among gay activists, Chick-Fil-A has been noted to support anti-gay causes for years. Most recently they were caught sponsoring and catering anti-gay marriage conferences in Pennsylvania and giving money to fervent anti-gay Jesus freak James Dobson. They claimed the sponsorship was a mistake, which is a neat trick considering the microsecond it became clear they were busted, Chick-Fil-A’s materials disappeared from said anti-gay-marriage conference’s website, along with any evidence they were openly anti-gay. The money trail goes as far back as the mid-2000s at least and probably a lot further.
Meanwhile, the company’s religious fundamentalism was hardly any sort of secret. It feeds into the company’s frankly rather creepy control freak nature that sees family members of would-be franchisees getting interviewed to ensure they have “appropriate values,” a company policy of hiring only married workers, and digging into the private lives of everybody who applies there. Chick-Fil-A got sued a dozen times between 1988 and 2007 for discriminatory hiring practices.
Nonetheless, it raises two questions: why the hell is this coming up now and why did they go out of their way to pick this fight after what’s presumably years of quietly backing anti-gay causes?
For that I can only offer a guess and that guess is this: Chick-Fil-A really thought either nobody would notice this or that if they did, it would be a minor Internet kerfluffle they could easily control because hey, they controlled the last few, right? The really sad thing about the whole Facebook impersonation debacle is that it’s clear the company was expecting support from the average American and just isn’t finding it.
The other sad thing is that people keep talking about their food like it’s any sort of spectacular sandwich. I mean, really, come on, guys, it’s good for a fast food chicken joint but if I’m going to get fast food from a Southern chain, I’m going to go to Raising Cane’s, dammit.
(Pic via)
