By RU Contributor Jack Mandaville

Pros of me not having a personal Facebook account: I’m not subjected to people’s melodramatic posts about seemingly normal problems. I don’t have err’body all up in my bidness. I’m not bombarded with RON PAUL, BRO! articles. I’m not forced to be in contact with a number of people I care little for. I don’t have a means of stalking ex-girlfriends to see if they’re living more fulfilling lives than me.

Cons of me not having a personal Facebook account: I miss out on a lot of important things going on in the lives of people I love and care about. I have a harder time staying in touch with the men I served with. I have to endure constant comments like, “OMG! YOU DON’T HAVE FACEBOOK?!” I don’t have a means of stalking ex-girlfriends to see if they’re living more fulfilling lives than me.

But perhaps the greatest con of not being on Facebook is missing out on the sidesplitting shit shows whenever some national controversy or cause—that doesn’t really concern the majority of the public—makes its way into the feed and everybody goes on a priggish crusade to get their opinions out there. Pick your poison: Casey Anthony, Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman, Kony 2012, etc. Everybody becomes an authority once the ball of vogue topics starts gaining momentum. Me personally, I usually stay out of it. (Which is hard to do because I’m an archetypal know-it-all.) But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the shit out of watching these train wrecks of debate and discourse.

The latest controversy that has Americans throwing their two cents in is, of course, the Chick-fil-A circus. And this subject combines our nation’s two favorite things: God and fast food. Since everybody else is getting on this bandwagon of opinion, I’m coming with too.

Before I continue with my little harangue, I just want to state that my opinions DO NOT represent and are not endorsed by the Rhino Den. They are mine and mine alone. And according to me, they’re better than yours.

Issues regarding GLBT rights have become extremely polarizing in recent years. From the marriage debate to the repeal of DADT, the majority of Americans seem to take some sort of stance on these issues. As for me, I really don’t care, which I suppose technically means I’m in support of gay rights because I’m not actively trying to hinder them. Whatever.

Being that I’m out of the loop on social networking gossip, I first heard about the controversy from one of my more liberal friends. By the time he was done castigating the popular fast food chain and its president, I assumed that place had John Rocker running the show. But when I actually read what Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy said, all I saw was one man giving a non-confrontational statement on his views of marriage and its pertinence to his faith. No shouts of “Faggot.” No calling anybody a “Queer.” I may not see eye-to-eye with him on it, and I certainly wouldn’t make those statements if I was running a business, but the fact is there was nothing venomous about it. Furthermore, Chick-fil-A is a private company, so he can say whatever the hell he wants.

This is what he said:

“We are very much supportive of the family, the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

Really? This is what people are losing their minds over?

Now we’ve got activists justifying a national boycott of Chick-fil-A by saying this is a human rights issue. Hold the fucking line! Get the Secretary-General of the UN on the phone. We need to take a break from dealing with genocide and famine in order to settle the troubling situation in the Unites States regarding that maniacal tyrant Dan Cathy.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who vowed to block the expansion of the restaurant in his city, also chimed in by stating: “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”

Thanks, Rahm. I’m glad you clarified what the values of Chicago are all about. I always thought your city should be focusing on reducing its high violent crime rate and ingrained culture of corruption at city hall, so I’m really pleased to find out that ya’ll have decided to take on the real threat: poultry peddlers.

Aside from the boycott, activists have called on the gay community to stand in front of different store locations and kiss in order to, I don’t know, show that gay people kiss, I guess. From this point, we get a spectacular glimpse of how low the American media machine will stoop in order to sell the news.

This was from a CNN.com article on Aug. 3, 2012:

“Two dozen protesters turned out in the afternoon at a Chick-fil-A location in suburban Atlanta. At least one couple shared a kiss for the assembled media.”

HOLY SHIT! STOP THA MOTHAFUCKIN’ PRESSES! One gay couple shared a kiss in Atlanta. We gots to get national coverage on this shit. We’ve got a revolution of the gay community going on here.

Seriously, I honestly feel sorry for the majority of the gay population right now. I have a pretty heavy feeling that your average gay American—who works a normal job, pays taxes, and lives his or her life as normally as possible—is probably cringing at the idiocy of all this… just as I am.

You see, all you need to do is look at the type of people congregating around these Chick-fil-As and you’ll understand what this is really about. It’s about professional activists wanting to have their day in the sun and a bored media willing to help them stir up some shit. The kind of gay people I see standing in front of these restaurant locations probably don’t represent the majority of the gay community. A lot of them are straight up OWS-looking.

Do ya’ll remember the Republican National Convention in 2008? Remember how those Iraq Veterans Against the War yahoos were all running around spouting off their nonsensical drivel? If you’re an Iraq Vet like me, you were probably thinking: “There’s only like fifteen of these people. There are hundreds of thousands of us who aren’t running around like dickheads, dressed like we’re going to a Rage Against the Machine concert. Why does the media keep giving them a voice and not the majority of Vets?”

I’ll tell you why: Because they were acting like assholes. And assholes, even though they’re in the minority, are easier to market than normal people. So that’s why the media is giving attention to an unemployed gay man who looks like Wavy Gravy instead of the guy sitting in his cubicle, just waiting to go home for the day.

In order to combat the dozens of people protesting Chick-fil-A, conservative activists like Mike Huckabee—who knows a little something about fast food—have called on the American public to consume Chick-fil-A as a counter protest. And it worked, too. Last Wednesday, the company had record setting numbers.

But let’s face it; this whole thing has gotten out of hand. We’ve got Myrmidons of equality converging on a privately owned business in order to fulfill their OWS void, the Christian right counteracting by shoving more fast food down their throats, and meanwhile, normal people like me can’t successfully get a goddamned chicken sandwich because all the hoopla has turned every fuckin’ Chick-fil-A into a circus.

Is this what it’s come to? We’ve still got men and women dying in Afghanistan, an uncertain economic situation, approaching presidential elections, and a legislative body that’s been as productive as a backwoods welfare queen. And this is what America is getting divisive about right now, the opinions of a guy who oversees the circulation of chicken sandwiches. I’m going to go ahead and say it: It’s times like this that I wish our population would just bottleneck so we can get a fresh start at things.

Regardless, I’m going to continue to eat Chick-fil-A… and I’ll be doing it for the right reasons: Because that shit is DELICIOUS!

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