John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Politicization of Fast Food

I just went through Chik-fil-A drive through in my hometown in Louisville. Mainly because it’s after 9pm and most their clientele are home for the night —praying with one another, talking about heterosexuality, and getting ready for bed.

At least that’s the media stereotype we have in my mind

I figure that between 9-10pm each night the city’s liberal and hypocritical underbelly slithers through the Chik-fil-A drive-thru wearing sunglasses and masking their real voice as they order. And not making eye contact as they ask for extra ketchup for the Waffle Fries before careening out of the parking lot before one of their liberal brethren recognizes them and turns them into the local Whole Food Market.

But the food is so good at Chik-fil-A, otherwise idealistic Ashley Judd Democrats (it is Kentucky) are, at least during a weak moment (between 9-10pm Mon-Sat, but not Sun) willing to risk everything they stand for to munch on a Spicy Chicken Sandwich or toasted Chicken Salad Sandwich.

Is that really so wrong?

Of course it is!

Rand Paul was willing to talk for 13 consecutive hours last week (4 1/2 hours longer than his typical interview and floor speech) because of what he believed. Period. A conviction politician with a consistent and principled ideological diet. No carry-out order of Dan Dan Noodles from the ultra liberal and multicultural PF Changs would have caused him to waiver.

Shame. Shame. I know your name! John Y Brown III! You Daniel in the Lion’s Den! Or Chik-Fil-A’s double drive-thru line.

But at least I had the decency NOT to park and eat in Chik-fil-A parking lot. I clandestinely drove across the street and parked in the Taco Bell parking lot where I noticed two other cars parked with Chik-Fil-A bags on the dashboard with incognito drivers wolfing down a chicken pot pie.

But then I saw something truly shocking. It was, if true, reminiscent of the moment when Sen Joe McCarthy was castigated by the Army Colonel and General Counsel, “At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?” Only worse because it was more brazen and nakedly hypocritical.

It was a high profile and celebrated local republican operative, whose name I’ll leave anonymous for now (or someone who looks just like him) wearing dark sunglasses in a corner booth eating a Bacon Club Chalupa inside Taco Bell. As he chewed blissfully he simultaneously belied his party’s rigid policy position on immigration, symbolically anyway. “What a sanctimonious hypocrite!” I thought to myself.

Sure,I was outraged and wanted to lash out at this blatant policy hypocrisy. But I thought to myself, maybe –just maybe—all this hyper partisanship had gone a step too far. Instead I asked myself what would Democratic Patron Saint US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan do if he were alive and found himself in this identical situation? Easy. He was discreetly walk inside Taco Bell and quietly offer his political nemesis his now empty Chick-Fil-A bag to disguise the rest of his Taco Bell order.

But Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a better man than I am. I left the scene and am posting the entire episode on the Recovering Politician blog!  For sake of our children and our children’s children’s future. Or something like that.

As Grover Norquist taught us, “Bipartisanship is another name for date rape.” Or, I would add, an unreported partisan breach involving a Taco Bell Bacon Club Chalupa or Chik-fil-A Charbroiled Chicken Wrap.