Columbia's locally owned weekly newspaper since 1963

By mikem@thecolumbiastar.com | on August 25, 2022

Cracker Barrel is focused on two things— great tasting, southern style food, and We Don’t Care. One would consider this a snowflake free zone. The chain cornered the market on down home vibes and catered to travelers. I first heard of Cracker Barrel, which was established in 1969 in Tennessee, from my mother. She loved traveling. If you ever visited West Blocton, Alabama, you might understand why.

Someone with unlimited savvy designed the concept of Cracker Barrel very specifically—do everything possible to advertise your southern authenticity without being so obvious as to be tacky. No true southerner likes tacky. And Cracker Barrel encourages customers to eat like southerners once ate before we discovered obesity is a health risk.

Boatloads of gravy, fat seasoned vegetables cooked to mush, biscuits and cornbread made with lard, and greasy meats dominate the breakfast menu at Cracker Barrel, and we love that. Very few things in life are as satisfying as the Country Boy Breakfast.

Cracker Barrel is like sweatpants. We all wear really comfortable clothes at home, but most would never leave the premises dressed that way. Cracker Barrel is the food version of, “I don’t care what you think about me; I’m eating hearty.” The perfect No Fault dining experience for southerners unwilling to change and proud of it.

Suddenly they are being called woke. Cracker Barrel, like all purely capitalistic enterprises, decided to try something new to get an under served customer base. So they debuted Impossible Sausage— a meatless meat. That is their prerogative as a private business wanting increased profits. The idea folks are taking to social media to express outrage and declare to never visit there again is stupid but also telling. It is what we have become.

First of all, anyone can protest via social media. It’s easy, requires little effort, and you likely will not face any hard core criticism— like putting your political beliefs on a bumper sticker. And with the anonymity, there is no meaningful conversation to possibly course correct someone lost in the depths of “doing their own research.”

But we are currently this way because we’ve been programmed by opposing forces to react at silliness and act like our future depends on something that will not be remembered tomorrow.

Liberal finger waggers have taken over the moral high ground and violate nearly every right we were granted by our founders by overreacting to things our moms once told us to ignore.

And conservative politicians are banning books and pressuring teachers to limit their lessons to things that won’t raise questions or get someone actually thinking— an exercise public schools were once supposed to enable, and something vital to a working democracy.

No one should have the right to control the actions of others. The arrogance associated with trying to ban something one finds offensive is mind numbing. Yet we continue to support this. And, trust me on this, neither side can make headway without support from the vast majority of those of us who have become disgusted by America’s direction. We’ve taken sides and stubbornly refuse to actually consider whether our actions are part of the problem.

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