Dem
47
GOP
53
(Z) has surely mentioned once or twice that one of the best classes he took as an undergrad was Folklore and Mythology 15, with Prof. Peter Tokofsky. The basic idea of the class, which was entitled "Urban Legends," was that you can break down the various urban legends that somehow caught fire, and figure out what's really driving them. For example, one of the case studies was the then-recent urban legend that the ship that appears on the Snapple iced tea bottles is actually a slave ship. This cost the company a fair bit of money. And it can be pretty conclusively shown that what gave that urban legend its juice was Snapple's decision to hire, as a pitchman, Rush Limbaugh. He was, well, kind of racist. And if Snapple hired him, they must be kind of racist. And if they are kind of racist, then they'd probably put slave ships on their bottles. That's the basic analysis.
With most of the right-wing culture wars stuff (and the left-wing equivalents), it's pretty easy to use the basic tools from F&M 15 to try to figure out what's going on. For example, we assiduously avoided the Sydney Sweeney "good genes/jeans" controversy because it was so damn stupid, and because there were multiple polls showing that the whole thing was basically just 6% of the American public yelling at each other. That said, it caught fire on the left for the same reason that the Snapple legend did, namely the belief that many Republicans are racists. And then it caught fire on the right because Sweeney is white, and blonde, and a registered Republican, and the whole thing became a great way to talk about how those libs are so over-sensitive, and so easily triggered and yadda, yadda, yadda. There's some truth there, but when we saw Donald Trump prattling on along those lines, and Fox news giving Sweeney and the delicate-as-a-flower libs more than 20 hours of coverage, our thought was "Physician, heal thyself."
And that brings us to the latest chapter in the culture wars, one so ridiculous that we just couldn't let it pass without mention, but one so bizarre that it's nigh-on impossible to reverse engineer it, and figure out what's really driving it. Many readers will have heard about it by now, but for those who haven't, the current right-wing obsession is... the new Cracker Barrel logo. Here's a comparison of the old (left) and the new (right):
Seems like your fairly standard rebranding, right? Taking a somewhat cluttered logo that was probably created in the 1960s or 1970s, and making it more streamlined and web-friendly?
And yet, there are plenty of people on the right who absolutely lost their MINDS. Here are a few examples:
The most difficult thing to understand, perhaps, is how the new logo is "woke." Huh?
Again, it's not so easy to figure out what the heck is going on here. Clearly, the restaurant chain is a focal point for... something, because this is its third turn in the culture wars spotlight in the last 3 years. In 2023, right-wingers went loony over the addition of plant-based sausage to the menu. In 2024, they were infuriated when the chain recognized Pride Month. And now it's the "woke" logo.
If readers will forgive a brief sidebar, there was a small chain of restaurants a few years back called Po'Folks. It was doing the same thing Cracker Barrel does—homestyle Southern food, "country" decor. Except that Po'Folks' food was several standard deviations better than Cracker Barrel's is (Z ate at the Buena Park Po'Folks dozens of times). Also, that location was on a prime "row" of touristy things, including Medieval Times, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and, at the end of the row, Knott's Berry Farm. And despite all these things, Po'Folks Buena Park went under many years ago.
The point here is that Cracker Barrel is fighting a very uphill battle; their shtick is basically 1940s nostalgia, along the lines of the show The Waltons. That, plus mediocre food, might work out OK as long as there are people around who fondly remember the 1940s. But there aren't too many people like that anymore. So, it's innovate, or die (though it might well end up being innovative, and die anyhow). To the extent that we understand the right-wing reaction, it's that not only is the idealized past imagined by the restaurant long gone, but the 1940s-referencing version of the restaurant will also soon be gone. After all, they certainly didn't have Impossible sausage or gay pride in 1946, or even in 1966. And if you're backwards-looking—which is what "Make America Great Again" is basically about—then reminders of change could well make you upset and angry. We still don't get how it's "woke," however, unless that term has become so flabby that it now just refers to ANY change at all.
We do have one other theory, though it's conspiratorial. Since this "scandal" began about a week ago, Cracker Barrel's stock value has plunged $143 million. If you were someone who thought you could produce that result, and you shorted the stock, you could have done very well for yourself. Something along those lines happened with GameStop stock, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
In the end, it's just another reminder that, these days, much of the right and much of the left are speaking completely different languages. No wonder it's so hard to meet in the middle. (Z)