A CRACKER BARREL OF FUN

I was listening to The David Frum Show podcast yesterday.  Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and, according to his website, has been active in Republican politics since the first Reagan campaign of 1980.  He holds a BA and MA in history from Yale and a law degree from Harvard, where he served as President of the Federalist Society.  He also served as George W. Bush’s speechwriter and chairman of the board of a UK center-right think tank. 

I try to seek out points of view different from my own and was particularly intrigued by the topic of Frum's podcast, Why America Isn’t Rome (And Why That Matters).  His guest was Dame Mary Beard, who is Great Britain’s leading classicist and expert on the history of Rome and the ancient world. You can listen to or read a complete transcript of the podcast here.

But what I want to write about here is not the decline of ancient Rome, but humor and how it can defang the most terrifying beast.  Before introducing Dame Beard, Frum opened his podcast with his take on the recent Cracker Barrell rebranding and its relationship to, of all things, fascism.  Since I’ve been bemused by the former and thinking a lot about the latter, my ears perked up.  What could an Americana roadside attraction possibly have to do with fascism?  You might be surprised.

Here is a lightly edited excerpt from the podcast transcript:

Fascism is inspired by the search for enemies of the group. And whenever you see people with a strong “friend-versus-enemy” way of thinking—allies versus adversaries, insiders versus outsiders—what you’re seeing is the emotional juice on which fascism feeds. 

That’s why I’m going to take seriously for a moment this recent absurd outburst…about the changing of the branding of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. Now, Cracker Barrel, as those of you who have driven America’s highways know, is a popular restaurant in many of America’s rural places. Unfortunately for the shareholders and employees of Cracker Barrel, it’s decreasingly popular. It’s lost a lot of market share over the past decade. Cracker Barrel’s stock and trade is nostalgia. … And people who feel nostalgia want the product that reminds them of their own childhood. So [when] Cracker Barrel …, in an effort to hold on to or reverse its declining market share, rebranded itself [as modern, it suddenly went from friend to foe]. 

This has become a culture-war flashpoint of a kind that we’ve seen so often, and it seems of all the ones we have seen, it may be the most crazy, the most absurd. But it’s not absurd, because what it is—it’s a part of the process of the endless hunt to identify enemies. And the issue over which you identify your enemies—it doesn’t have to be important because the test isn’t the issue.  The test is the search for enemies and the in-gathering of allies to create a friend-foe distinction as Carl Schmitt, the German philosopher, wrote. …[H]e is the central text of many in the new modern fascist movement. He’s been read and admired by many who are very close to the Trump White House, and you can hear echoes of his language and above all his idea that the power to govern is the power to identify people as enemies of the state. Whether they’re foreigners or insiders, fellow citizens, the enemy can be identified by the state, and the tools of the state can be used against them. And that’s what’s going on with this Cracker Barrel story. It’s just a way to flush out who the enemies are and to identify who the friends are.

The retail chain’s dumping of Uncle Herschel’s general store, with its old timey eatery, for a slick, stripped-down, white interior and a slightly streamlined logo not only offended a certain rural aesthetic, but it made Cracker Barrel a traitor to the nostalgic movement to Make America Great Again.   

Cracker Barrel found the reaction to its rebranding swift and brutal.  Donald Trump, Jr. led the charge posting,

WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?! 

He was followed by the President, posting on Truth Social,

Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll) and manage the company better than ever before. 

Market reaction was similarly swift and brutal.  According to CBS News, “Cracker Barrel shed almost $100 million in market value Thursday after its stock plunged following the release of a new logo.” The stock slightly recovered but then slid again, exacerbating the company’s losses.  The rebranding, including the cost of the redesign, estimated by CBS News to be least $700 million,  quickly became a corporate fiasco.

Cracker Barrel yielded to pressure from the market and enemy-signalling by the state. According to Fox Business:

By Tuesday, the company reversed course and restored its original logo. In a candid admission to FOX Business, Cracker Barrel said it "could’ve done a better job" in sharing what the business is about and emphasized that the beloved elements of the chain, from rocking chairs to "Uncle Herschel," "aren’t going anywhere." 

Savoring the win, the President chimed in:

“Congratulations ‘Cracker Barrel’ on changing your logo back to what it was," President Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. "All of your fans very much appreciate it. Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!” 

But as absurd an example of enemy identification by a fascistic state as the Cracker Barrel story is, for Frum it also offers a barrel of laughs to be exploited: 

Now, Cracker Barrel also offers a glimpse of what our hope is. I mean, the way you beat fascism, in the long run—the strategy, the ideals—are upholding the ideas of liberty and equality and human dignity. 

But in the short run, the best tool against fascism is humor. You know, fascism always teeters on the edge of the ridiculous. One of the first people to understand this was one of the greatest of early comedians, Charlie Chaplin, who made a film about the Nazi movement called The Great Dictator, in which he relentlessly mocked the buffoonery and absurdity. He ended with an uplifting message of universal brotherhood. But all along the way through the movie The Great Dictator, he relies on humor. 

And as you confront people trying to find group enemies and group allies by complaining about the rebranding of Cracker Barrel, you realize they’re teetering on the precipice of absurdity, and comedy is the push that can topple them over and discredit them, not with horror—although that is certainly deserved—but with laughter.

So, thank goodness for the comedians, cartoonists, digital artists, and Instagrammers who make us laugh at these culture warriors and expose their attempts to rebrand themselves as heroes

  and saviors of the state.

They help us see the humor in one autocrat's embrace of another.

They show the absurdity of the honors these autocrats believe are their due. 

Because as Chaplin showed and Frum said, these leaders are teetering on the precipice of absurdity, and comedy is the push that can topple them over and discredit them.   

Or to put it another way, sometimes we think too much and laugh too little.  

Keep it real!

Marilyn