Dear Linc,

I’ve been keeping quiet about this whole ridiculous Chik-Fil-A situation while still reading up on it and consistently cracking up to myself, proceeded by the consistent getting on with my life.

But this editorial takes the cake.

Full disclosure: I’m so much of an Obama man that I’ve come to even admire the people who have worked with him, and this includes Rahm Emanuel. 

Second disclosure: one of the reasons why I like Rahm Emanuel is because he’s Jewish and because, reportedly, he’s an asshole.

I like that he’s a Jewish asshole because Jewish people have been getting crapped on for centuries. I admit to having a perverse fascination with the whole of civilization’s enduring ability to consistently pick the same scapegoat over and over again, and that perverse fascination extends to how the picked-on fight back. As Malcolm Reynolds once said, “If someone tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back.” (Yes, I really did just quote a sci-fi character like he was real.)

That being said, if Rahm Emanuel is being an asshole to Chick-fil-A, then get in line, honey: he’s an asshole to everybody. I heard that when he was Chief of Staff, it was horrible working with him. But at least he was an asshole with a cause, unlike in retail, where sometimes a manager will get it in their head that they are the Chief of Staff and not, say, the manager of a shop that lives or dies by the daily sales goal and the sweat of the employees who try to make that goal.

Regarding this whole Chick-fil-A shit, look. This is how I feel.

The owner’s “guilty as charged” remark is smug, and in general, Chick-fil-A or not, I think it’s stupid whenever the persecution label is seized by the oppressors. The bullies saying that they are being bullied. Gay people have been strung up and their dicks chopped off for centuries. When gay people rise to power, it’s because they have to keep their gayness a secret. When straight people rise to power, many times it has been because they have to blame something on the gays.

That being said, I cannot bring myself to say outright that I will stop patronizing Chick-fil-A. Not that there’s one local to San Francisco, and even though they are trying to build one down in Mountain View, the people there are trying to stop it… anyway, whenever I go back to Maryland to visit Pop and Ma, Chick-fil-A is one of the places where we like to eat. Our idea of spending quality time with each other is the same as it has ever been when I was growing up: go to the mall, shop together, converse with each other when shopping and then rest over a meal at the food court. What if Pop and Ma want a sandwich from Chick-fil-A? Should I soil our family time by pulling in this worldly reality crap and letting them know that the stupid owner is a fucking bigot because with wrongheaded morals? It’s a sin for me to get married when my most scandalous hobby is eating a chicken sandwich with my parents? People like us get lost in the shuffle. We make things complicated by muddying up this age-old sentiment of us vs. them by being everyone all at once. We’re human. At least me, Pop and Ma are.

Joe