Monday, November 25, 2019

Chick-Fil-A dumps charitable giving for virtue signaling

Mrs. Paco and I met on a blind date, and the first place we dined together was at a Chick-Fil-A in Raleigh NC (it was the first time either of us had eaten there at all). We loved the chicken sandwiches, and it became sort of "our" place for decades afterwards.

In 2012, we were living in Fairfax, Virginia, and Chick-Fil-A had come under assault for the first time in a big way by leftist agitators because some of the owners were known to support organizations that honored traditional notions of the institution of marriage. A genuine grass-roots effort to show support for Chick-Fil-A arose, and one day, the local restaurant had a line of customers stretching from the building itself out across the parking lot and a hundred yards or so down the street. These loyal customers not only liked chicken sandwiches, they saw clearly that the proposed boycott by leftist organizations was an important battle in the culture war.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Some singer, who I had never heard of and whose name I can't remember now, got mobbed on Twitter because she had made some positive noises about the Salvation Army. The next thing I heard, she was apologizing profusely, and disassociating herself as rapidly as she could from the wrong-think of ever saying anything good about it. A week or so later, Chick-Fil-A announced that it will no longer be making donations to the Salvation Army - one of the largest providers for the homeless in the U.S., a cause that, supposedly, is paramount among Chick-Fil-A's charitable concerns. The Salvation Army provided a brief and elegant response via this Tweet.

The restaurant's corporate suits, of course, have denied that this has anything to do with leftist attempts at intimidation. Sorry, but the timing of the decision to cut off the Salvation Army, the rationale, the excuses being offered, the personnel who have been put in charge of the charitable foundation...I'm just not buying it. And, in any event, Chick-Fil-A has already been giving substantial sums of money to left-wing outfits, which I did not, in fact, know. But that won't make any difference to the radicals of the left; unless the company at some point, and soon, openly declares that it supports the moral neutrality (or perhaps even the moral superiority) of homosexual acts, it will get no credit at all from the social justice thugs. In the ongoing cultural war, the only thing acceptable to the left is unconditional surrender.

Mrs. Paco and I haven't eaten at a Chick-Fil-A for some time, and we don't plan on doing so again. Which is fine; we've developed a real fondness for Bojangles' sausage biscuits and dirty rice, and, naturally, there's always Five Guys.

Update Just barely satire: "Chick-Fil-A Replaces Cow Mascot With Golden Calf".

3 comments:

bruce said...

'sausage biscuits and dirty rice' - wow. That's a cuisine right there, and I looked up how to make it too.

JeffS said...

Yeah, that's really bad decision making, right there. The nearest CFA is a 4 hour drive, but I have enjoyed their food -- and not just because the corporation had a spine (back when).

I expect their food is still good, but whenever ANY corporation engages in virtue signalling, I don't go out of my way to patronize them.

Jonah said...

I've never even seen a chik fil a but I still have In-N-out burger. Wendys and Carls Jr. have perfectly adequate chicken sandwiches, but then I wouldn't even bother eating if I didn't have to.