I know today is technically the first day of August, but I got my calendar slightly confused a week ago and thought this would be the last Wednesday of the month for July…Whoops, but in a way it really worked out because by waiting a week a fantastic asshole of the month contender emerged: Chic-Fil-A President Dan Cathy.
Now I’m sure everyone knows the details of why he’s here by now, but just for a refresher: He recently gave an extremely bigoted interview where he denounced gay marriage, said being gay was against what God wants, and said we invite God’s judgment as a nation when we think we know better than he does. In other words, not uncommon for a Baptist preacher but a crock of shit for a CEO to say. Then, of course, all you have to do is look at Chic-Fil-A as a company to see their long, long history of treating it more like an evangelical enterprise than a fully functioning fast food business.
They’re closed on sundays for religious reasons. They’ve donated money to extremely conservative organizations and candidates over the years. There’s a current sex discrimination lawsuit in Georgia that alleges female employees don’t get promoted AND that a manager was told “she really should be at home” instead of the workforce.
Pretty much anyone with any knowledge of how Chic-Fil-A operates knows that retrograde social prejudice oozes out of their corporate culture, and could have guessed that they probably aren’t supporters of gay marriage (as if all the money they’ve donated to anti-gay marriage groups isn’t enough of a hint) but I guess that wasn’t enough for Dan Cathy. He just had to come down strongly against gay people so there was no confusion.
And, no surprise to anyone, this has triggered another partisan battle. The mayors of San Francisco, Chicago, and most adamantly Boston have said they will try to block plans for new Chic-Fil-A’s to be built in their cities. New York’s mostly-Republican Mayor Bloomberg—–ever the corporate suck up—–says he won’t hinder their plans. And, of course, the Grand Dame of hopeless social causes and behind the curve thinking, Sarah Palin just had to stop by for a photo-op as her family picked up greasy, artery-clogging food (their favorite) to show their support. Yet again, Palin proving herself the patron Saint of yesterday’s causes.
Even the media—-well, of course, even the media—–seems to be drawing lines in the sand. As usual it comes down to excellent, thought-provoking pieces that really want to explore an issue in more liberal outlets (The LA Times, which, like most liberal outlets doesn’t draw a hardline against Cathy and actually takes a very nuanced approach), and dead-simple, brain dead coverage by Faux News, who only talk about all the support Cathy is getting for his statements. It’s more than a bit comical when you type in Chic-Fil-A in Yahoo Search right now and there are four cautiously “liberal” articles that really don’t take a side one way or the other about a Chic-Fil-A boycott and seem against a ban, and right below is Faux News, talking about all the organized support Chic-Fil-A is receiving.
Still, I have to pick Dan Cathy for this latest round of comments that show how much corporate culture’s changed in the last decade. Back then, sure, you probably knew that Bill Gates was a big fundraiser for George Bush or that Starbucks leaned to the left, but they weren’t so outspoken about it. They didn’t want to risk alienating potential customers the way Cathy has by so openly taking a stand on a divisive but less-so-every-day issue. In fact, Cathy’s comments would have been a lot more welcome a decade ago, when the majority of America was terrrrrrrified of the gay marriage boogieman. Today, they’re much less afraid and (for the first time in American history) a thin majority supports gay marriage in nearly every poll.
Yep, attitudes are shifting, but Chic-Fil-A stays the same. Maybe soon they’ll discover what happens to companies that refuse to evolve, and companies that don’t like evolution much either.