Sanity took a hit to the gizzard when the New Yorker posted an article by an atheist presumably addicted to Chick-fil-A sandwiches and ashamed of his obsession.
The article is “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City.” The writer is Dan Piepenbring from Brooklyn, whose Twitter bio reads in part “I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls.”
The benefit of modest goals is that it is east to meet them. And then we remember it is at malls where Chick-fil-A restaurants are often found. It appears Piepenbring went to one too many.
The black truth is that once an addict starts on a bag of waffle fries there is no stopping him until he reaches the salty end. He enters a strange, exotic mall and is not able to overcome the irresistible force driving him to the food court. He will feel that he is outside himself, that it is another person altogether, who for the fourth time that day orders a chicken biscuit. With cheese.
He will hate himself after. And he will hate his obsession. If he is too far gone, he might even hate God.
A Slave to Taste Buds
What else can account for Piepenbring calling the opening of a new Chick-fil-A branch an “infiltration”? Why else would he cry against the chain’s “pervasive Christian traditionalism”?
We feel the man’s searing anger when he writes, “[Chick-fil-A’s] headquarters, in Atlanta, is adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet.”
But at last the reason for his lashing out becomes shockingly clear when he cries, “Its stores close on Sundays.”
The man has it, and he has it bad.
Now it all makes sense. Now we can see his frustration over the company’s stated purpose “to glorify God.” Now we understand the fixation on cows.
Cows?
Moo Cow
Piepenbring says “It’s impossible to overstate the role of the Cows.”
Chick-fil-A, if you didn’t know, has a series of amusing ads which portray cows saying “Eat Mor Chikin.” Cows are notorious spellers. One stunt had life-sized cows scaling a water tower on which was painted the slogan, one cow dangling from a rope held by another.
Cows are not chickens. It takes chickens to make Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Chicken sandwiches, therefore, are not hamburgers. Evidently the thought of hamburgers must set poor Piepenbring off.
He says cows are the chain’s “ultimate evangelists.” Evangelist, as in “a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching.” In this case, not the Christian faith, but the worship of the chicken nuggets combo deal.
Incensed with the company’s ads, he clicked here to read the rest.
Chicken chicken chicken chicken. Chicken chicken chicken, chicken chicken chicken. Chicken chicken chicken chicken; chicken chicken chicken (chicken chicken chicken) chicken chicken.
I don’t think Briggs understands the author’s fixation on cows — its not about cows, its about how cows have gone from being an underdog in the early advertising to a fixture hi-liting Chick-fil-A’s success.
Consider:
“…the number of chain restaurants in New York has doubled since 2008, crowding out diners and greasy spoons for whom the rent is too dear. Chick-fil-A, meanwhile, is set to become the third-largest fast-food chain in the nation, behind only McDonald’s and Starbucks.”
Chick-fil-A has gotten oh-so-phenomenally successful!
Before it was successful, it wasn’t:
“A representative of the Richards Group once told Adweek, “People root for the low-status character, and the Cows are low status. They’re the underdog.” That may have been true in 1995, when Chick-fil-A was a lowly mall brand struggling to find its footing against the burger juggernauts.”
Back in the “good ole days” Chick-fil-A was the “underdog,” as was its cow mascot, a struggling lowly brand without good footing. That’s just how a typical Liberal sees them-self (even when they’ve gotten successful, the internal feelings don’t go away).
That was ok. Misery loves company, after all.
But Chick-fil-A got successful (and so did its cows as a mascot) — and Liberals (the author is entrenched in the extreme of that ilk) cannot handle success. The entire screed against ‘C-fil-A’ is an emotional, and to an inquiring intellect somewhat vapid, rant against success (the attacks, sort of, on religion clearly fall within this larger focus). This is not surprising.
Recall what Dr. R. says in his work, “The Liberal Mind” — here’s an excerpt from the book, from the website:
“Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.
“What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.””
After reading the excerpts from “The Liberal Mind,” above, re-read the anti-‘C-fil-A’ article and the anti-success sentiment becomes much more obvious. The essence of the article really boils down to a Left-winger’s frustration that some “little guy” — in a sense a peer — applied morals and self-reliance and competence [many of the values Liberals despise] to become successful — and shame on it for that! The once downtrodden & struggling C-fil-A’ betrayed the peer-bond by getting successful … and is now flaunting that success in a locale that is a bastion of Leftist values that don’t work.
In other words, the author’s screed reveals envy.
Envy is what drives liberals to advocate for equality — its not about bringing up the weak to some level of parity, it is all about bringing down the successful.
As the sayings go:
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
The benefit of modest goals is that it is east to meet them
And that you can ignore the west.
How do you know that Mr. Piepenbring is an atheist? I have Christian friends who cannot stand traditionalists and the anti-gay crowd. I also know philosophers who are deist, believe in God, but not in organized religion.
Whatever the true psychological reasons for Briggs’s post and Piepenbring’s are about, I am glad that Panda Express doesn’t server Panda meat, Chicago’s Dog House doesn’t serve dog meat and so on.
No, I don’t want any more fast food restaurants to infiltrate my town.