The Internet occasionally produces a bit of commentary that is so over-the-top, so ludicrous in theory and tone, that it is difficult to tell whether it was written in earnest or as satire.
On Friday, the New Yorker published such a piece. It’s called, “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City.”
The author’s central thesis seems to be this: The popular fast food chain’s kindly exterior and community-friendly message are part of a larger conspiracy to cloak the company’s true nature. The real story, according to the author, is that Chick-fil-A is an insidious corporate monster, hell-bent on contaminating the Big Apple and other areas with its Christian values.
He doesn’t seem to be joking. His wild-eyed fear-mongering appears to be in earnest, which makes the article far funnier than if it were merely satire. That he fails to recognize he is the zealot in this scenario (remember: he’s yelling about a fast-food chain that has exactly three stores in a city with a population of more than eight million) is the first joke. The second joke is his clumsy attempt to obscure an obvious anti-Christian bigotry.
It’d be one thing if the author opposed Chick-fil-A because its founder and his family support the traditional definition of marriage. It’d be one thing if the author disliked the company primarily because he believed it to be on the wrong side of gay issues. One gets the sense, however, that his commentary would read the same regardless of where the fast food chain landed in the marriage debate.
That is, one comes away from this article with the strong suspicion that the author’s chief concern is that Chick-fil-A has a Christian corporate message. That the organization also supports traditional marriage is just icing.
How else are we to interpret the ostensibly serious line, “[T]he brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism”?
I invite you also to consider whether there’s any real difference between the following passages and the same people who see “creeping sharia” wherever they see an American Muslim:
His earnest concern over the perils of chicken sandwich theocracy, paired with a ham-fisted attempt to cloak his distaste for Christians, is funnier than anything a professional satirist could have dreamed of. WE WANT MOR.
