On the stupidity and wonder of chicken

The last time I had Chick-Fil-A (CFA), I didn't like it.  Rather, it's more accurate to say that it was so uneventful that I have no recollection of how the chicken was, or the circumstances in which I ate at a CFA.  Something tells me that it was in Colorado, in some nondescript mall, and that the food was unexceptional mall food.  By all means, this is a terrible anecdote, a horrifically ordinary story that should have never been told.

But today, the politicization of CFA is complete.  If you eat there, you are a homophobic, right-wing fanatic; to boycott CFA means that you are a left-wing lunatic.  Besides the apparent stupidity of the fact that fast food chicken has become a proxy battle for American politics (or, how fitting!), there are other axes at play here that culminate in what is essentially a consumer decision to buy, or not to buy.

In other words, to get from point A to B (A being I support/don't support gay marriage, and B being the choice to buy / not to buy CFA), one must jump through a number of hoops in a game that has already been pre-set and simplified by this CFA phenomenon; put more clearly, the jump from A to B implicates other connections that are left unspoken.  The first connection is the growing one between food and politics.  Going green, buying organic, buying local has become tightly bound up with systems of environmental ethics and politics; so much so that this arbitrary connection has turned on its head to yet again absorb the habits of middle-class consumerism.  The terms "green" and "organic" have become purchase-triggering buzz words for products specifically aimed at the middle/upper-middle class and perhaps these movements to go green has departed from its original privilege of being critical of the current system of consumption and consumerism.  The second connection is the one between religion and politics.  The separation and entanglement of church and state in America, combined with the need for the institutionalization of values and beliefs (whether it's in a church, family traditions, or personal practice day-to-day) immediately raises the stakes in a loaded issue like gay marriage. The third system at play is the relationship between food and religion.  Food clearly plays an important part in one's religious exercise ranging from keeping kosher or halal to making the decision to go vegetarian or vegan (or not) for spiritual or ethical reasons.  Finally, the sign of the fast-food chicken itself evokes an entire history of connotations and denotations.  Take fried chicken for example, as a perennial object for racially-charged humor.  Beyond the race angle, fast food fried chicken has been, at least to my estimation, a food of the lower/lower-middle class.

All of the above connections require some sort of leap.  For example, I wouldn't know from the way you order a vegetarian dish indicates you are a Buddhist of a vegetarian kind, or just someone who doesn't like meat.  But the connection is still there, strong, since the cause-and-effect of the ingestion of food on one's spiritual state merits recognition in the institutionalization of one's beliefs.  So even though there is some leap, it is still once, maybe twice removed, so the arbitrariness of one's position is still sensible.

Now, the difficulty of associating the choice to eat/not eat CFA as a political statement is that it is completely arbitrary and is at least twice, three-times removed from a sensible idea-expression.  Take, for example, the criticism of Mayor Menino's position that his statement to not allow CFA in Boston violates religious freedom.  On one level it is true that the mayor's comments clearly evidence a discriminatory purpose.  But absent those comments, if one were to bring a claim of religious discrimination under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act for a denial of a permit, the analysis would have to be contorted and twisted because the use (operation of a fast-food restaurant) is commercial.  Further, the decision to eat/not eat CFA chicken is not itself a religiously motivated act; it's one that has been wholly constructed by recent events.  Finally, the decision to buy/not buy CFA is not itself a political statement and is at best, a symbolic one.

As a symbolic statement, the expressive act at eating at CFA may have some significance.  Also, the issue of gay marriage itself ultimately may come down to a binary decision like the choice to buy/not buy chicken; are you on their side, or mine?  But the stupidity of this phenomenon lies not in the fact that "it's just chicken," and we wonder how the chicken came to take on so much meaning.  Rather, it's the decidedly consumer-like decision this debate has taken on.  Fast food is the pinnacle of American consumerism, dependent on a culture of mass-production simplified into fatty morsels (of deliciousness).  It's as if our political, economic, and religious choices have been presented to us on a set menu of mass-produced items, and the only variance is whether to switch out the fries for onion rings, or to get the meal without ketchup.  CFA posted record numbers on the support CFA day, and I'm sure someone can make a short-term profit if they had a gay fried chicken food truck (or at least added it to their menu).

So, eat CFA.  Or, don't eat it.  Either way, we can at once marvel at the way tasteless, mall-food chicken has taken on so much meaning and yet wonder if this phenomenon has made our decisions into tasteless, mall-food choices.