Ed Coper

Hello, Richard.

Thank you for having on this long, polite conversation, which surely must be the antithesis of social media outrage.

Well, let's see how it goes.

We'll see.

We'll see what happens.

Yes, though, Cracker Barrel, it's kind of like the truck stop highway, you know, restaurant, very big in the American South.

So, look, it's not a bastion of woke lefty ideals by any stretch of the imagination.

So Cracker Barrel is declining, the sales are going backwards, and they decide, well...

Maybe it's time for a refresh, just an update.

Let's change the font on our logo to be a little bit clearer, not the old-timey writing.

Now, if you then waded onto the internet in the ensuing days and weeks afterwards, you would have thought that they have committed some great hate crime.

And in fact, they were accused of, you know, the woke takeover of a cherished American icon.

They were accused of sacrificing everything on the altar of diversity, equity, inclusion in the name of the woke mind virus.

This language was used?

I'm quoting verbatim.

I'm quoting verbatim.

Everyday users on the internet, high-profile characters in the Republican ecosystem like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump himself, all of the right-wing talkback radio and Fox News-style TV and all of these influencers, which is this whole new coterie of people who drive public opinion in America, all they were doing was shouting angrily in all caps about a logo change for an American restaurant.

This is emblematic to them of all the ills that are facing in America.

And so what do you do?

You shout angrily into the internet and provoke people into this hysteria about what really should be a storm in a highway rest mug.