It’s time once again for The Future American’s FAIL OF THE WEEK! Every Saturday, I name a person or group who has spent the past seven days behaving in a particularly idiotic way. Since it’s my belief that idiocy knows no politics, nobody is safe.
This week’s fail was brought to you by everyone who has either tried to block Chick-fil-A from setting up shop in their city or state (i.e. Boston) or demanded that someone terminate one of their existing leases (i.e. Minnesota State University) recently. It would be one thing to do this if the company were engaged in corruption or some other criminal activity, or even if the food was sickeningly unhealthy and nobody wanted to eat it anymore. Then, I might be able to excuse all this off-with-their-heads rhetoric. But not when the reason is the company heads’ completely legal, though not necessarily proper, financial support of anti-same-sex-marriage efforts across the country.
It’s of little concern to me how devout a Christian CEO Dan Cathy is – or at least it would be if he a) kept that out of the company’s mission statement and b) didn’t use company money for political purposes, especially purposes with which I could not disagree more. Sure, it’s a privately owned company and he can do what he wants with his own revenue. I have never eaten at a Chick-fil-A and cannot attest to the quality of the food they prepare. But his style of activism would be enough to make me uneasy about giving him an extra few bucks.
That’s how people used to deal with companies they didn’t like. That’s not good enough for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who posted an open letter telling Chick-fil-A not to set up shop there before realizing he couldn’t actually prevent this. It definitely isn’t good enough for protesters at MSU, who have an online petition calling for the outlet at their Mankato campus to be booted from the student union. Moves like this will fire up supporters of Chick-fil-A’s position and make them look like the reasonable ones. Which, compared to these opponents, they are.
Besides, this isn’t the only company taking positions on social issues. Alyssa from Illinois pointed out this week that plenty of companies give money to Planned Parenthood, among them Wells Fargo, American Express and ExxonMobil. Yet when have you ever seen a horde of right-wingers demand that those companies get outta their towns? Why that is, I can’t say, but it’s pretty damn rare.
Want to get rid of Chick-fil-A? Stop eating there. If everyone stops eating there, they’ll go out of business and have no funds left. You’ll never be able to accomplish that, but at least you’ll be able to put your money where your sandwich hole is.
