Why They're Winning (or, The Last Thing I Ever Hope to Say About This Whole Stupid Chick-Fil-A Issue)

Posthuman time is a funny thing. The theory was that the "information superhighway" would make us all totally informed of every up-to-the-minute important event across the world, and we'd be like virtual threshing machines, separating the rich wheat of media from the chaff.

Actually, I can see the resemblance.

What we forgot to account for, apparently, is the fact that the practice of critically thinking about all those tasty news-grains headed down our eye-throats (this mixed metaphor is becoming disturbing) has become about as popular as reading the ingredients on a can of soda before you drink it, and all that quickening of time amounts to little more than the point being lost that much faster.

We are consumers, first and foremost, and what we often forget to realize is that what passes for "debate" in contemporary rhetoric is often a purposeful conglomeration of manufactured sound-bytes and talking-points which aim to do nothing more than re-frame a burning issue within the context of whoever is trying to control the topic.

Sorry, Colin, but if you're going to make it in this town, you better spice that prose up. And blame more protestors.

Thus, we have the Chick-Fil-A "debate."

See what they did there? Clever. Totally inaccurate, but clever.

Now, if you woke up yesterday and suddenly decided to check in on that story you heard about an entire month ago, or maybe recently stirred from a coma, then I can sincerely understand how you might be confused about the recent claims regarding the "anti-free-speech" efforts of the Chick-Fil-A boycott.

However, if you've been paying attention, you should be able to see through the smokescreen to what's actually been happening: a classic case of misdirection.

Abraca-free-speech-a-dabra: Voila! My homophobia has disappeared!

Here's a brief timeline of the debacle:


July 2: Reports emerge that CFA donated millions of dollars to organizations that seek to make same-sex marriage illegal.

July 16: Dan Cathy (son of CFA founder Truett Cathy) publicly reaffirms his company's stance on "traditional marriage."

July 18: The Jim Henson Company decides to stop selling its toys through CFA in order to prevent their money going to support anti-gay organizations.

July 20: Boston mayor Thomas Menino attempts to ban CFA from opening any new store locations in his city.

July 23: Mike Huckabee organizes "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" to defend their "right to promote Christian values."

July 25: CFA posts disinformation on its restaurants claiming that they recalled the Muppet toys due to "reports of children getting their fingers stuck in the holes of the puppets," and creates a fake facebook profile to provide further "back-up" to this false claim (although I guess the model for Stock Photo's "Pretty Redhead" could have been one of their customers).

July 25: Chicago also attempts to block a new CFA from opening, making up for the questionable decision to allow that weird face-spew monument.

July 26: San Francisco joins the ranks in promising to prevent CFA from operating in the city. "Wow, how shocking," said absolutely nobody ever.

I haven't seen this many people confused
about what they're voting for since Florida, 2000.

August 1: The proverbial feces hit the fan when thousands of people actually show up on "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" in defense of the company's.... free speech?










Of course, part of the problem rests in the fact that there is no "definition of marriage" on record in the U.S. Constitution, and thus those who are trying to limit it to "between one man and one woman" have a much easier job to do, message-wise: their thesis is right there in the main argument. Just reiterate it with a bunch of false threats to "tradition" and slap a kid on it, and you're done.

That poor child, being forced to learn about the basic equality of human love. Fortunately, those glasses will blind him in about fifteen minutes. Then his literacy level will also be level with biblical standards.

For those who are trying to oppose this attempt to make the U.S. constitution into a footnote from the book of Leviticus, it's not so easy. What can you say that won't play into the fears that the "gay agenda" is trying to turn our kids into miniature Paul Lyndes, flitting about and queering up the place?

"Yikes. That's even too gay for me."

Furthermore, how do you not wind up sounding like you're trampling on the rights of religious folk to express their constitutional freedom of speech?

 

You shift the topic back. That's how.

The Chick-Fil-A debate is not actually about who should get married to whom. It's not even about who believes what. It's really about corporations, and their influence on politics.

You want freedom of religion? Done. Freedom of speech? You got it. But when you start using your absurd amounts of left-over capital to secretly influence the government, you're not talking about anything that's in any constitution I've ever seen - you're practicing a different kind of "redefinition:" the definition of democracy.

...At least the last time I checked.

So, what really happened is that Chick-Fil-A had a forced outing - they're gay for corporate influence, and they unapologetically love being in bed with political institutions which seek to change America's laws so that they match their own particular agenda. That's the problem.

This is what Christian persecution looks like: note how instead of
protesting, the lion is eating his face. Betcha he wishes Rome would just boycott.

The day that a company starts using their funds to support the banning of churches in America, I will boycott it. When Ronald McDonald starts calling for America to institute Sharia law (all that make up makes me think he's hiding something), I'll protest alongside my friends of different faiths (and non-faiths) in defense of the very same constitution that provides for all of us to be treated equally.

Because political influence is something people have. Not corporations.

But as long as companies like Chick-Fil-A keep us trained on the distraction of who's allowed to say what, they'll keep winning the war of who's allowed to buy what - and if we're not careful, our rights will go up for sale.

Capitalist Combo #10 (Hold the Hate)

It's time we stop pretending that there's a private sector and a public sector. Nobody's buying it, anymore - and it's the only thing we're not buying. Look behind the curtain in the control-room of just about any major corporation, and you'll find that they're using the lucre they have wrought from the hands of their unsuspecting customers to finance and support all kinds of crazy platforms and positions that very few consumers would otherwise support.

Nobody ever expects Charlie Chan.

For example, take a look at this list and try to imagine avoiding buying something that eventually doesn't trickle up to at least one of these companies. Sure, it's easy enough to hold off buying a plane from Lockheed Martin or resist investing through Morgan Stanley (because, you know, you're probably poor, statistically speaking) - but then you get to Time Warner. And AT&T. Angry at the Democrats? Sorry; but if you're using a Microsoft product, your money has already found its way to Obama. Annoyed with Republicans? Well, if you've shipped anything through UPS, you've tacitly funded that spangled elephant. This isn't some illuminati-type conspiracy, either - this is the economic reality of American capitalism.

The bright side of multinational corporate global domination: you feel at home everywhere!

That's why this recent kerfuffle over Chick-Fil-A is actually sort of a good thing: the brazen cajones of Truett Cathy (whose name belongs squarely in a Steinbeck novel) and his overt anti-gay-marriage advocacy has provided a well-needed bitch-slap to consumers across the country. We almost forgot that our money didn't just disappear behind the counter when we bought our uncannily and undeservedly popular boiled chicken sandwiches - we were forced to wake up and smell the ideology.

...And then give money to organizations that totally don't.

This leads to an obvious question, then: which companies contribute to what I believe in?

Well, the answer is pretty ugly: most of the big ones play both sides. You can find out here which ones are "leaning" in one particular direction or another, but the general rule is that it makes them more money to just contribute to the people who'll make them more money, regardless of which pesky little social policy they may happen to staunchly support. However, there are some that maintain a shred of integrity, and here's a short list of who you're actually partnering with when you make that holy exchange of currency for goods.

Not pictured: greasy politician's palms

We'll start with the Liberals:

1) Barnes & Noble

 

 
Although print-media is on life-support, B&N still manage to provide scholarships and donations to local and national programs which "focus on literacy, the arts or education"  (though apparently not the oxford comma). These organizations include local libraries, literacy programs, and schools, and are pretty much guaranteed to give a warm fuzzy to those bleeding-hearts who still think that society needs people who can read.

2) Google

While it's pretty hard to avoid using if you're trying to do, well, just about anything on the Internet, it's should be comforting to the left-leaning among us that Google has been providing money toward "education programs in science, technology, engineering and math; education for girls in the developing world; programs to teach tech skills to the underprivileged; and efforts to fight the global problem of human trafficking." You know. Socialism. The real bonus here is that since companies provide revenue to Google largely through advertising fees, you don't necessarily have to feel bad when that creepy marketing-banner pops up for a snuff-film company when you were just looking for a video from the Smothers Brothers - their murder-money is being redirected by Google toward providing a good education for the girls who managed to escape.

3) Polo - Ralph Lauren

As stodgy as a company that named itself after a group of folks who didn't think riding horses around a grassy field was quite elite enough and decided to add pretty outfits and lacquered wickets to the mix might seem, their record on campaign finance is utterly irreproachable: these effete equine aficionados are nothin' but Democrats, all the way. 100% of their political donations have gone to prop up that beleaguered blue donkey, and it's not just so they can climb on top of it and start whacking things with sticks. From Kerry to Schumer to Daschell, if there's a "D" next their name, Ralph Lauren will shell out a few bucks to support 'em.

4) Sonic

Something tells me they're not homophobic.

Even though their ad campaigns would suggest that their customers are severely developmentally disabled men who live out of their car and make a habit of throwing tater-tots through open windows, you can bet that slurping down one of their seventy-two-thousand flavors of iced syrup drinks will give you the kind of brain-freeze that only a Democrat can get. This burger chain hasn't contributed a single cent to Republican candidates, and it's pretty clear that while they make their employees cavort dangerously around a highly-trafficked parking lot on roller-skates, the conservative-fifties feel of the place ends there.

5) Costco

...And you should see the other fifteen departments.

It may seem counter-intuitive to imagine a company that requires you pay them up front to gain membership to their little cabal of discounted goods be left-leaning, but Costco apparently uses that money for more than developing a really good excuse to order a pizza while you shop. Co-founder James Sinegal donated a hefty chunk of change to the Democratic party in 2011, and they didn't even have to show their card at the door. That might be just the excuse you need to renew your membership and actually feel good about standing in front of a pallet of frozen burritos, trying to figure out exactly how to justify spending a significant amount of your income on late-night snacks. At least it'll make you feel better about filling up on the free samples, though.

And now, for something completely Conservative:

1) American Apparel

Note: to easily convert to advertisement,
simply add half-naked junkies.

Despite its reputation for being liberal, this bring-the-slave-labor-home-to-the-states company has actually donated to Republican candidates at a three-to-one rate. That means if you buy a three-piece suit, only one of them is even vaguely democratic (I'm betting it's the vest). So if you need some threads to attend the grand-old-party, you can feel free to ignore the taunts you'll receive by the other guests when they see you rocking the classic look advertised by budding porn-stars everywhere. Seriously, just look at one of their ads.

Inyo, eh? In yo' what?

2) Ritz-Carlton

Nah, the crown doesn't quite capture the whole "crazy-rich empire" feel... let's add a snarling lion.

Okay, so this one is probably no surprise. Rich people are more likely to vote Republican, and pretty much nobody but rich people are staying at the Ritz. But the surprising thing here is the sheer amount of cash they're forking over, and to whom, exactly, they are forking it: they gave a cool million to Romney's "Restore our Future" Super-PAC, and they're clearly in the position to give even more once they figure out a way to get all those bathrobes and towels back (which still aren't okay to steal, even if you disagree with their politics... unless you see it as some robin-hood-esque mission and give those luxurious pieces of cloth to homeless shelters, which would kind of be messed up when you imagine a guy spilling his soup-kitchen meal onto a Ritz-Carlton robe...).

3) Angel-Soft, Brawny, and Dixie products

I know - it's a three-in-one buzzkill for liberals looking to stock up for a night of party-rocking, but on the other hand, it's total win for a conservative frat. All three of these products (and more) are owned by the Koch Brothers, about whom you may have heard if you've been awake for the past year or so. These guys have openly avowed to donate tens of millions of dollars to virtually anything Republican, and could pretty much care less what other people have to say about it. So, if you want a quicker-picker-upper for the tears of your left-wing friends when Obama loses the election, then you need go no further than that totally-straight lumberjack with a come-hither smile.

4) The Coachella Music Festival

Diverse? Yes. Unwitting supporters of the GOP? Almost definitely.

This one might just make hipsters out of the young republicans, and a bunch of other people just cry. Yes, Coachella, the same festival that makes even those hippies who went to Woodstock cringe in disquietude at their utter disregard for hygiene is promoted by the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), whose parent company is owned by a guy who gave $50,000 to John Boener's PAC. That's enough money for at least a partial hologram of Reagan to appear in the next lineup of bands - and his doo-rag would probably also be red.

5) Waffle-House

Like the Vampire, the Waffle House only achieves full-strength under the cover of night. Or drugs.

If you like your political opponents smothered and covered, and those opponents happen to be Democrats, then you'll find a tasty meal any hour of the day at your local bastion of the depravity of humankind that is the Waffle-House. Their CEO, Jim Rogers, Jr. griddled up a hundred grand for American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-run Republican Super-PAC which is sponsoring Not-Obama in the upcoming election. For Dems, that means a few more miles on the interstate until you can get to a Denny's - and for Republicans, it means having to face the difficult decision of supporting their local Waffle-House and actually going into a Waffle-House. Of course, if they do, they'll likely see the result of years of social-service programs being sliced into bits by conservative finance policy, and that might just make it worth it for them... if they can stomach it.

Thus, in the interest of providing much-needed transparency to the otherwise disingenuous flow of hidden monies within our corporate network of shadowy financial ties between private companies and public policy, I would like to throw my hat into the ring, and just make a chicken-sandwich company that is as utterly left-leaning liberal as is humanly possible. I will call it "El Pollo Homo."

Slogan courtesy of our PR Director, George Pizarro.

EPH will not only support gay rights, it will downright cock-fight anyone who suggests otherwise. By plucking up the what-must-be-thousands of employees from that other boiled-chicken-fillet-between-bread-joint, we will not only save money on training new employees, we'll also be raking it in as the only chicken-sandwich-based restaurant that is overtly pro-gay. Think about it - people are boycotting, not fasting, for heaven's sake - and where else are you going to go for a plain chunk of uninspired bird-meat slapped unceremoniously on a lukewarm bun? Plus, our balls-out gayness would allow for a very creative assortment of sauces. Delish, right?

Of course, there are those who are tired of this constant politicization of businesses and who would frown upon such an obvious agenda coming from an establishment whose job it is to just serve food to people without tacitly haranguing them into some two-bit ideological hogwash that makes them uncomfortable... and to them I say this:

Don't like buying a burger-and-hate combo? Try a local store.
They can barely stay in business, much less donate to people you don't like.

On Not Being Forgotten...

It's a harrowing sort of posthuman luxury that we are able to read the words of the dead so quickly. Following the tragedy in Colorado, I felt my insides squirm as I clicked the link to Jessica Redfield's twitter-feed, poring over her final tweet with a real-life dramatic irony that nobody should reasonably be able to have.

Then, I found her blog, and was shaken to the core. She had survived a prior mall-shooting by a random whim, which carried her previous "sushi-mission" toward the less healthy pursuit of a burger/poutine combo - a girl after my own artery-clogged heart - and thus brought her outside to miss the carnage by three minutes.

So when I see people posting things about how less gun-control is an appropriate reaction, or more gun-control, for that matter, I have to stop and ask myself the underlying question that makes both of these responses seem secondary:

What kind of society do we live in when a girl in her mid-twenties can be first-hand witness to two individual and unrelated mass-shootings at public places?

Think about it: you are 2,000 times more likely to die from heart-disease than from a motorcycle accident. That is a triumph of modern civilization. We zoom around on small, controlled explosive devices practically every day of our lives, and yet organ failure exponentially outdoes us compared to more violent demises. Was Jessica Redfield just that unlucky?

In 2010, 6 people died from melting underwear. That's hot.

No. Although sharing her surname with a fictional family who tends to get attacked by the undead at a seriously unusual rate may make you want to point to conspiracy theories, the sobering reality sets in when you realize how many public shooting-sprees have taken place in America.

Since the 20th century, there have been 92 "Rampage Shootings" - not including school shootings - in the United States, and over half of them have been within the past 50 years. Not all of them claimed lives, but these are situations where individuals have suddenly and without discernible reason taken out a weapon and began firing into crowds of completely befuddled bystanders.

Rambo: Murderer? Yes - but at least you know why
he's doing it... even if you can barely understand him.

This means we have created a society that manages trillions of tons of high-velocity tonnage speeding around at distances of often mere inches from one another better than we have managed to provide against the apparent inevitability of highly armed individuals attempting the mass murder of virtually everyone within their purview.

And people want to blame the movies. And the TV. And the video-games. And Marilyn Manson.

"Dude, that was so last decade. Leave me alone."

But not the guns. Nobody wants to blame the guns. Now, I'm not a statistician, but I can tell you that there's only one common link between every spree-shooter from now since the beginning of time - can you guess what it is? Need a hint?

Very good, Keanu. Now work on having more than one facial expression.

This is not, much to most people's surprise, leading to some tired paean calling for more gun control. I'm not even going to try and argue that controlling the amount of guns entering and being sold within the country leads to less gun deaths - because I don't have to: it's basic math.

Really, the problem is that we already do have a lot of guns in this country. 270,000,000 of them, by current estimates, and that's just the privately owned ones. We could literally put a gun in the hands of every single adult in the entire country, and still probably have enough for the larger of the children to carry in case we don't have time to reload. That's the kind of statistic that would make even Ted Nugent raise an eyebrow.

Cat-Scratch Fever: the bath-salts of the 1970s.

Now that we've established that it's possible, though, we might as well take up the argument of how, exactly, America should respond to this national tragedy. The way I see it, it boils down to two main possibilities: the "private citizen-vigilante" approach, and the "governmental legislation" stance.

Option A: Private Citizen-Vigilante

"...Not to mention I'm in my forties. I don't really make a Santa-list."

It's ironic, really - after all, Bruce Wayne is pretty much the ultimate in vigilantism, and it is his brand of self-possessed retribution against evil that I'm certain people imagine themselves emulating when they make the argument that we need more people armed in order to protect ourselves from the people who are also armed. It kind of goes like this:

Is it just me, or does the "problem" look a lot like Eminem?

Okay, so let's take this argument at face-value and apply it to what happened. What people are apparently suggesting is that if there were more people in that theater who had weapons, they would have just stood up and capped James Holmes in his riot-geared ass, and thus ended his killing spree before it got too far.

So, okay - even this raises questions. Never mind the fact that he gassed the audience before firing, or that he prepared far enough ahead to actually wear an armored vest and helmet before bursting in through the emergency exit. How many people do they think would be saved in this scenario, and how many armed movie-goers would it have taken? One? Three? A third of the audience? I just don't understand the logic here when you bring it down to the level of practicality: even if several people stood up the moment he threw the first canister and drew their weapons, he would still have shot a lot of people. Even if their aim was utterly perfect, and they managed not to hit any innocent bystanders in their collective ad-hoc execution of this cretin, he would still have shot lots of people.

Adding more guns to the equation does not produce a viable solution. What they're really saying is that they feel safer when they have their guns, because they imagine that they are protected against the terrible people in this world who might try to exploit their general trust in humanity, and then they just superimpose that fantasy onto the real-life scenario without really going over the details first. It's perfectly understandable.... but it's wrong.

'Nuff said.

Option B: Governmental Legislation

Yes, you're reading this correctly: the average ratio of police to resident is 2/1000. And Newark, for once, looks good.

Can you imagine being responsible for the safety of 500 people? Even with a gun, the numbers here paint a picture more befitting a Left 4 Dead sortie than the expectations of a real-life, honest-to-pete peace-officer in the city of Aurora, Colorado. Yet, these are the actual figures of police presence in the very city where this tragedy occurred. Now, given the average theater capacity of 200, and the number of screens at the Cineplex where it happened, we're talking about 3,200 people at a major event if every showing is sold out.

But, of course, they were only showing it on three screens, so we'll go with the conservative estimate of 600 people watching the movie and maybe a few hundred standing in line. Let's say a total crowd of a thousand or so, adding in for the other showings and such. According to the present metrics, that's two officers they can reasonably expect to be dispatched to oversee the crowd.

"I'm getting too bureaucratically under-funded for this!"

Now, you might think that two officers for a single multiplex is more than enough - but then we look at what happened with the Aurora shooting, and ask how Holmes got into the theater with a militia's-worth of weapons in the first place: he came in through an emergency exit.

Note how there are four sides, and a lot of ground to cover.

It only takes a brief visit to Google Maps to realize what the problem was: there weren't enough people monitoring the people. It's pretty clear that two cops are not going to be able to patrol nearly enough ground to be able to catch everyone who's skulking around this major media event, and the worst-case-scenario happened.

The answer? Double the police. At least. It would take four officers to even cover each side of the thing, much less be able to respond to suspicious characters in a reasonable amount of time to prevent them from bursting into the emergency exit. But they'd at least be able to sound an alert, or run in and apprehend them - you know, the thing we pay taxes in order to be able to expect?

Increasing the staffing minimums for city police would be the most efficient and productive way to respond to this tragedy. It wouldn't be popular. It wouldn't be cheap. It wouldn't be sexy. But it would work.

Okay, maybe it would be sexy... and it would work.

Most of all, this blog is about not being forgotten. I don't know if Jessica Redfield suffered from athazagoraphobia, but I do know that she cherished every waking moment, and that she loved living. I know this because I read her blog. And that's what she said.

So, before people start using this event to bolster their favorite politician, or rail against the fear of losing their precious second-amendment rights, or whatever particular item of demagoguery it is marshaled into supporting the cause of, I just want to put it out there that we don't have to keep letting this happen. We have the capacity to provide the oversight that would prevent these things from occurring again and again, and if even one city decided to increase police presence at public events, then I'd like to think she'd be glad to know it.

This dark night does not have to rise again.

Yeah, I know. Sorry, Batman.