On Chik-fil-A and the Politics of Consumerism

Some years ago I wrote a blog post about Conservapedia, wherein I posited that the existence of such a site indicated continuing work to build a separate conservative civil society. I am dismayed to report the work is yet ongoing, although somewhat pleased to have been somewhat out in front on this topic.

When the Chik-fil-A thing blew up, there was a lot of hand wringing about the efficacy and/or morality of boycotting. For instance, in this piece from The Atlantic the writer states:

On both sides of our latest culture war divide, we must learn to have level-headed disagreements without resorting to accusations of hate speech and boycotts. As Josh Ozersky argued on TIME Thursday, "businesses should be judged by their products and their practices, not by their politics."

That this argument completely misses the point of the market economy is obvious. We should of course feel free to not patronize businesses which endorse political views antithetical to our own. It is so nakedly wrong, in fact, that it's very difficult to construe it as anything other than a defense of the corporate freedom to push any and all political agendas without fear of retribution from the peasantry. It advocates consumerism without choice, wherein the consumer is not and should not be a rational actor.

The argument also ignores an ugly truth: there's money is politicized business. For instance, remember late last year when Lowe's pulled its ads from that TLC show about Muslims? Remember the backlash? Remember them doubling-down? Of course you do, and that was a business decision. They believed that they could strengthen their brand with those rough, tough Real American^TM  types by letting them believe they were the home center for them. The same is true of Nabisco (and, by extension, Kraft), and their gay pride Oreo. They knew they would catch all sorts of Red State hell for it, but at some point they decided it would sell more Oreos. Maybe they decided the gay community did not have a processed, packaged cookie to call their own, and that Oreo could be that cookie? Who knows? Someone at Kraft for sure. You don't last long in the Fortune 100 by not knowing.

The point of all this is that we are already in the midst of an era where our consumer choices are politicized, and will only become moreso. A sad side effect of living in such a massive consumer economy is that we have enough choices to support a Red vs. Blue consumerism. Wal-Mart, Lowes and Chik-fil-A for the Reds, Target, Home Depot and Oreo for the Blues. Are you a Romney voter? Buy an F-350 dually! Like Obama? Here's your Prius! And on and on. And what's more, the corporations get this. In a way we can't even begin to comprehend yet. We will keep buying things, and they will keep finding ways to make us feel good about our meaningless choices.