Tuesday, August 07, 2012

DEAR LIBERALS: PLEASE STOP TRYING TO REPLICATE THE ZOMBIE RIGHT'S HIVE MIND

This isn't going to work, which will make us look weak, so why bother?
Gay marriage activists are planning to swarm Starbucks on Tuesday in an attempt to counter the record sales from last week’s Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.

The chicken chain enjoyed a surge of support during the Wednesday event, dreamed up by former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee after Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy went on the record backing the “biblical definition of the family unit.”

A follow-up protest from Chick-fil-A critics on Friday, which was dubbed Same Sex Kiss Day, was more subdued....
Er, yeah, I'll say it was more subdued. There were lines around the block at Chick-fil-A stores all over the country for the right's big day out -- and of course there were, because conservatism in this country is like communism in Mao's China, an utterly top-down phenomenon, with the equivalent of Mao's Little Red Book being whatever talking points are being promulgated on Fox News and talk radio and other wingnut-noise-machine outlets at any particular time. Oh, sure, people on our side will repeat what lefty and liberal opinion leaders say, but we don't share the right's obsession with joining, with following, with imagining ourselves to be some sort of holy/patriotic army mustering for battle. (Last Wednesday you could go to Free Republic and post "Chick-fil-A after action reports." At Free Republic, they love describing their accounts of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations as "after action reports.")

Face the fact that Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was a great one-day success for the right, and it's going to be difficult to mount an imitation protest that equals or exceeds it; if you fail, you look less powerful, and even if you succeed, what you did looks like me-too-ism.

Better to give the right its one-day news-cycle victory and then stop drawing attention to that victory. Take advantage of the fact that it's a hell of a lot easier to avoid Chick-fil-A every day than it is to eat there every day. Work hard to make a success of the Chick-fil-A boycott, slowly and patiently, getting the word out to more and more people, while also spreading the word to marriage equality supporters about sympathetic companies like Starbucks. Play a long game.

14 comments:

Victor said...

Yeah, we don't do these kind of protests well.

Marches, demonstrations - yes. Even boycotting products, based on companies advertising on right-wing TV and radio shows.

But leave restaurant protests to the soda-guzzling, meat-and-fried-fast-food, 'super-size' my order, loving righties.

What's next, a Chich-fil-A protest in their parking lots with free piercings, and giant gay puppets carrying paper-mache veggies?

Please, my fellow leftie protesters - ENOUGH WITH THE GIANT FECKIN' PUPPETS!!!

Never Ben Better said...

Eggsactly, dear Victor; the difference in effectiveness between the sides' protests is that between diehards and dilettantes. Overgeneralization alert: The diehards sledgehammer home their in-your-face points while the dilettantes sidetrack themselves into oh-so-clever street theater, a form of amusement about as politically effective as unleashing a troupe of mimes.

Unknown said...

The only thing close to China's communism is the current administration. You liberals had/have no problem with the occupy protests but god forbid the conservatives stand up for what they believe in. Honestly, I don't care how many babies you abort or if you think your two dads should be able to get married, but stop making a spectacle of it. Instead of protesting everything, go to work. You should take all the lazy, welfare receiving folks to a job fair. That would be useful.

Steve M. said...

This has been another episode of "How many boilerplate Fox News talking points can I squeeze into a blog comment in under 100 words?"

Unknown said...

At least you didn't argue about it

Dark Avenger said...

Arguing with Foxdroids is a waste of time.

Victor said...

My ficus plant is smarter than most FOX viewers.

At least when it doesn't know what the feck it's talking about, it doesn't open its mouth and prove it.
It is, after all, a plant - unlike most FOX viewers and Rush listener's, who are mental vegetables.

But please, do go back to your rightie sites, and serenade the other veggies with your
"Song's of Sean."

Steve M. said...

I'll second what Dark Avenger said.

Unknown said...

Oh victor, you libtards always get so upset when someone disagrees with your irrational bantering. Whomp whomp whomp fair, whomp whomp whomp free this free that. Wanna do lunch at chick-fil-a? Nah, you'd rather have coffee at Starbucks. If you noticed what I said before, go ahead, scroll up, I said I don't particularly care what you do, just stop making a spectacle out of it.

Anonymous said...

"Stop making a spectacle out of it"? Ah, you mean something you don't like shouldn't be in public.
We'll, I'm none too fond of chinless hookworm feeding y'all types sporting Stars n' Bars on 5th owner pickup trucks where plywood is considered a substitute for a broken window. But I don't go out of my way to tell them to stay out of my sight, I merely point and laugh.

Quite wasting your energy over gay marriage, Joe. No self-respecting queer would ever marry you.

Unknown said...

See, once again with the aggression. I do believe it was the Dems that had a fit because the owner of Chick-Fil-A believes in traditional marriages. It's not like they banned gays from going to the restaurant. But oh my god!! The sky is falling! Ban Chick-Fil-A!

Oh, not sure what the red neck comment had to with anything, I'm from Boston.

Well anyways, maybe you and your husband will get AIDS and use some of that Obamacare.

Victor said...

Joe,
"Oh victor, you libtards always get so upset when someone disagrees with your irrational bantering."

Hmm...
Possible food for thought from some right-wing moron?

Then you write, "Well anyways, maybe you and your husband will get AIDS and use some of that Obamacare."

No.
No food for thought.

Just the usual nasty regurgitated talking points.
Can you spout them everytime your string is pulled?
Or, is that something that you prefer to keep in the closet with you?

Thanks for proving the point that you're just another stupid, ignorant, and hateful asshole.
Not that there was any doubt about that!
At least not in the rational community.

Go back to your right-wing blogs, troll.
You bore us.

Come back if you EVER have anything original to say.

But that's as likely as my ficus plant singing the aria from "La Boheme."

Never Ben Better said...

Wow, thanks for banning that troll, mine host. He wasn't even all that good at it; sort of like a dog who barfs up his roadkill meal on the kitchen linoleum before he can process it into a turd on the new carpeting.

RickM said...

"... if you fail, you look less powerful, and even if you succeed, what you did looks like me-too-ism."

It also plays into the idea that a big successful "buycott" means anything. Righties have spent the past week with their chests puffed out thinking and saying "Biggest single day in Chick-Fil-A history! WOO HOO! That means - um, that gay marriage IS wrong, um, somehow."

It's resistance-is-futile politics, and they do it all the time, mainly because it works ON THEM. We're smarter than that.