CFA Appreciation Day – The Triumph of the Ordinary

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The Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day yesterday was historic. It was historic because it marks a new method of mass protest. I even hesitate to use the word ‘protest’ because it wasn’t a protest. There wasn’t any anger. There wasn’t any hate. There wasn’t any bullying. There were no unwashed crowds of unhappy people holding a sit in and causing other people stress, inconvenience and expense. There were no protest signs, no marches, no noise makers and attention grabbers. There were no revolutionary slogans, no clenched fists, no class warfare, no sullen adolescents in a stroppy mood....

Yesterday’s Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was the sort of ‘revolt’ this country needs, but it was even better than the non violent revolutions and peaceful protests which have changed the world because it was so ordinary. It was just plain, ordinary Americans getting in their cars and doing a plain, ordinary American thing: going out for lunch to a fast food joint. It was just plain, ordinary Americans doing something plain and ordinary, but positive and joyful and good. In buying an ordinary tasty chicken sandwich at their corner fast food emporium ordinary Americans were expressing the wish to be left alone to be ordinary Americans.

There were no protest signs (except from a few glum pro-gays who said we were eating ‘hate’ sandwiches) There were no noisy, angry scenes. Folks in the drive through lines did not honk their horns or proclaim their Christianity with bullhorns. There were no statements against homosexuals or homosexuality. (Indeed, the only statement put out by Chick-Fil-A affirmed their commitment to serve and employ all people equally without notice of race, gender, age or sexual orientation.) The brilliance of the event that it used the network of a nationwide fast food chain as the foundation for a visible, peaceful, creative nationwide statement.

There was no bullying, no hateful anti-homosexual loud mouthed preachers. This grace, patience gentleness and community good humor contrasted with the ugly and spiteful comments from the ‘other side’. Nobody wished their enemies to get cancer the way ‘comedian’ Roseanne Barr proclaimed. Nobody was using back room political and financial pressure to bully the majority of Americans the way mayors of Boston, DC and Chicago were doing. For all the talk of the traditional marriage supporters being full of hate, there was not hatred apparent. It was just ordinary suburban Americans sticking up for their way of life by buying a chicken sandwich with their friends and neighbors. These were not scary people like the folks from Westboro Baptist who tote guns and hate homos. They were the folks next door.d

This is the part that the editorial writers don’t understand. And unless they have an epiphany or leave the newsroom they will never understand. They are so sure of their moral superiority, even if that morality is new minted, they imagine all those people who bought a chicken sandwich yesterday are bigots. The people they have verbally pushed and prodded, insulted and denounced, into whose chests they have pushed their ink-stained fingers, who they feel free to bully because they were hired by billionaire moguls who have handed them a bullhorn. These people who were buying a piece of chicken on a bun were telling them to shove it. Very politely.