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A Side Of Moralising With My Chicken, Please

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

I love Chick-fil-A.

Their fried chicken is great, perfectly seasoned and cooked just right. The waffle fries are out of this world. So is the sweet tea. The dips are actually tasty, and worthy of having such awesome chicken dunked in them (the barbecue and honey mustard are particularly good). The staff are consistently the friendliest, most courteous, helpful staff you will ever encounter at a fast food restaurant. They employ someone to greet you with a warm welcome when you walk through the door, and they walk the restaurant topping up your soft drinks for free if they notice your cup is getting low (did you hear that, British restaurants? Free refills! Try offering them!).

In short, they are pretty much everything you could want in a fast food restaurant.

Which is why this story, reported by Politico, is so irritating. The article reads, in part:

The fervor over the restaurant’s politics began when Chick Fil A president Dan Cathy said earlier this week that Chick Fil A is “guilty as charged” in support of “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

It really annoys me when companies stumble into the news cycle in this way. Whether it is Target donating to a group that benefitted an anti-gay marriage candidate (even though it is fairly certain that they donated for reasons other than this), the CEO of Whole Foods penning an Op-Ed critical of President Obama’s health reforms, or now Chick-fil-A being dragged into the gay marriage debate, it is all quite unnecessary and seems to bring out the worst (and, incidentally, un-American) aspects of supporters and detractors alike.

Now the three examples above are not identical. In the case of Whole Foods, the CEO wrote his “ObamaCare alternative” op-ed in a personal guise, though coming out and writing a political op-ed piece contrary to the likely views of the vast majority of your customers is certainly not very wise. In the case of Target, they made a donation to a group that supported candidates who promoted pro-business policies that they agreed with, but failed to do their due diligence to ensure that none of the beneficiaries espoused any other, more controversial policies, which unfortunately one of them did.

But in the case of Chick-fil-A, the company president Dan Cathy specifically supported an anti-gay marriage policy, and deliberately included his company in his recent statements, rather than making a statement in a personal capacity. Firstly:

“…we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about.”

And then:

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that … We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that.”
Without getting into the extent to which corporations really are and are not people, this is just not smart business. Some aspects of the Chick-fil-A corporate culture are very commendable – the fact thay they choose not to open their restaurants on Sundays so that staff have time to spend with their families and attend church if they are religious, for example, is refreshing in this day and age, and harms no one (except people with fried chicken cravings after sunday services).
Announcing that your company does not support marriage equality, on the other hand, while not actively harming anyone (because there is no discrimination at work, the company serves and treats all customers alike), is just plain irrelevant. Chick-fil-A, as a corporate “person”, is not harmed by any attempts to legalise marriage between two people of the same sex. Nor, for that matter, are any private heterosexual individuals, no matter what ludicrous claims they may make.
If a corporation exercises its supposed first amendment right to speak out against a policy that directly impacts its bottom line (such as tax policy or employee healthcare, a la Target or Whole Foods) this is perhaps understandable. But gay marriage? I would be very interested to hear an argument explaining how the legalisation of gay marriage would result in lower profits for Chick-fil-A. And until I hear a convincing one, I will be of the opinion that matters such as these are none of their business, and that they, and their CEO, would do well to keep quiet on the topic.
Why pick an unnecessary fight, alienate potential customers and generate bad headlines? It’s just bad business.

Romney Gets It Right

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I think that Mitt Romney struck exactly the right tone in this speech, given in the aftermath of the horrifying shootings in Aurora, Colorado. NPR reports:

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney who was in Bow, New Hampshire for a campaign event addressed the mass shooting in Colorado, during a speech this afternoon.

Romney said he was addressing the nation, not as “political candidate,” but as “a father, a grandfather, a husband, an American.” Now, he said, “is the time to look into our hearts and remember how much we love one another and how much we love and how much we care for our great country.”

The report continues:

He said that as the days go by, we’ll learn of the brilliant futures that were lost due to this “hateful act.” And that “there will be justice.”

“But that’s a matter for another day. Today is a moment to grieve,” he said. It’s a moment to remember that hate is overcome by the outpouring of support that the victims of the shooting were shown today.

Romney echoed the president’s earlier speech saying that tonight we’ll hold “each other closer.”

“We pray that the wounded will recover and that those who are grieving will know the nearness of God,” Romney said.

Amen.

SEMI-PARTISAN SUMMARY

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Semi-Partisan Sam’s inaugural summary of new events and commentary that are worth a read today.

CULTURE

The Obama and Romney campaigns paused their respective election campaigns in response to the tragic cinema shootings in Colorado, which have left at least twelve people dead. This did not stop some people from trying to make political hay out of the tragedy, though they were roundly chastised by Slate Magazine.

The Daily Mash takes a sardonic look at the new Batman movie which just received its London premiere. Mocking pundits from left and right alike, who have attempted to find a relevant political statement in the subtext of the movie, they report that “Director Christopher Nolan’s latest epic has prompted intense speculation from critics searching for socio-political meaning behind the images of a man in a costume hitting people and running away from explosions.”

 

BRITISH POLITICS

Robert Halfon MP writes an opinion piece for ConservativeHome, arguing that the Conservative Party needs to work harder to win the respect and votes of trades union members, where necessary reaching over the heads of their ideological, self-serving union leadership. I couldn’t agree more. The average RMT worker has no more in common with the fat, bloated Bob Crow than I have with Matthew McConnaughey, and it is ludicrous that Crow should claim to speak for his entire membership and not be called out for doing so. A point well worth remembering as leaders of the Public Services Union call a strike in the run-up to the Olympic Games, based on a ballot where turnout was less than 20% of members.

Nick Cohen at The Spectator has an excellent piece exposing the cravenness of the British government in handing the Olympic organisers and their favoured partners so much control not just over the Olympic brand, but over the ability to market goods and to exercise free speech itself. In fact, the Olympic organisers are the beneficiaries of a special, bespoke law (the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act of 2006) which gives them special and criminally enforceable legal rights that no other private individual, company or organisation enjoys. This article is a must-read.

An expectant couple were shocked to find a ghostly image of Margaret Thatcher’s head in the ultrasound scan picture of their unborn baby, as Guido Fawkes reports. I really have nothing to add to this one.

Tony Blair would be more at home in America than Britain, or at least would receive a warmer welcome, writes Paul Goodman at ConservativeHome.

A worrying new “grassroots” campaign has appeared, on Facebook and elsewhere, calling for the renationalisation of Britain’s rail network. Going by the name “Bring Back British Rail”, they long for a return to the days of swift, courteous, efficient transport service and a customer-oriented ethos that used to exist prior to…oh wait. Well, the government should just own everything, right? It’s simple! ADDENDUM – I refined my views slightly after a discussion with a respected friend on the Bring Back British Rail group’s Facebook wall.

 

AMERICAN POLITICS

Andrew Sullivan gets there first and does a better job of analysing Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech, which has sparked so much Conservative gloating/fuming. I must admit that when I first heard it, I thought that this was another facepalm moment, akin to Obama’s “clinging to guns and religion” faux-pas, but Sullivan clears things up and demonstrates quite clearly that the “that” Obama is referring to were the roads and bridges and infrastructure which he was discussing immediately before – and which were conveniently left out of the quote. You can still argue that Obama attributes too much success to the collective aspects of American society – the infrastructure, the regulations, and so on – but I think it is pretty ridiculous to argue that the president really believes that entrepreneurs are not responsible for their own success.

Michele Bachmann, the fire-breathing congresswoman from Minnesota, finally stepped over the line with her letter calling into question the character and patriotism of a senior State Department aide who happens to be Muslim. This was too much even for the likes of John Boehner, who was one of several senior Republicans to disassociate himself from Bachmann’s ‘McCarthy-like’ witch hunt.

The General Services Administration (GSA) appear to have failed to learn from the furore that followed their Las Vegas blowout in 2010, or at least decided that blowing taxpayer money on lavish events was a feat to be encouraged and repeated. Which they duly did in November of that year, allegedly spending $268,732 on a venue, drinks and canapés, entertainment and party gifts at a “performance reward ceremony”.

Highlighting an often-overlooked point, Lori Montgomery, writing in The Washington Post, reminds us that Americans actually pay the lowest taxes to the federal government in 30 years. If today’s GOP cared much for the truth, or understood the concept of an objective fact, perhaps they might stop whining about Obama the tax-raising president. But I think we all know that won’t happen.

This controversial piece by Tom Junod caused quite a stir when it was published just over a week ago. Analysing the secret drone strike programme operated by the Obama administration (though its existence is officially denied, apart from a series of fortuitous leaks to let the American people know how successful it is), it should make any right thinking person question the new powers over life and death, due process and standards of accountability that are being claimed by the federal government. It should also make anyone who voted for Obama hoping to put an end to the criminal excesses of the Bush administration feel betrayed and angry about what is still taking place in your name.

Fortunately, the ACLU is now getting involved and suing the Obama administration over these grotesque constitutional overreaches, as Adam Serwer reports at MotherJones.

Picking Your Battles

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I remain relatively new to this whole blogging business, and am still very much learning the ropes.

And while I am largely making it up as I go along, what with posting pieces on the culture and politics of two different nations, interspersed with classical music excerpts, architectural musings and the odd cat picture, I do try to stick to a few strictures passed down from others that seem to have served them quite well – post regularly, engage with your readers, link selectively, and so on. This seems to be working fairly well, but there are some occasions when the pieces of advice I have read or received come into conflict with each other. For example:

1. Post something, anything, about every important story that comes up. That way, people will learn to keep coming to your blog out of habit, your readership will go up, etc. etc.

and

2. Focus on quality. Pick your battles, and only weigh in on those stories where you have strong and original opinions. Your posts will be better informed and more enjoyable to read, and your readership will go up, etc. etc.

This is tricky for me. I tend to have opinions about most things, and if I had unlimited hours I could certainly commit a lot more of these thoughts to this blog. But aside from the time constraints, I often feel that by the time I come to a story, others have already dissected and analysed it in a far superior way. There’s no point in parroting the words of someone who got there first, without having anything interesting to contribute. And that leaves the question of what to do with all of the articles that capture my attention and interest, but about which I have few original thoughts to add.

For example, George Miller, writing at adamsmith.org., has an excellent piece reminding us that the recent failures of the private security firm G4S (contracted to provide much of the security at the upcoming London Olympic Games) should not be viewed as an indictment of outsourcing, or of the private sector in general. It is concise, well-written and chimes entirely with my own beliefs, but I have nothing really to add to it.

And therefore in future, rather than constructing a throwaway, waste-of-time blog post about such articles, or ignoring them entirely on my blog, I have decided to offer a kind of “daily summary” at the end of each day, with a few select stories of interest and a line or two from me about why they are worth a read. Hopefully, once this has a chance to bed down and establish itself, it will become a popular feature of this site.

I would be interested to here in the comments section below from any readers who have any other suggestions, insights or advice that they could offer.

In the meantime, I am going to proceed as planned.