We have been Duped
My friends, you have all been duped….
Those of you who have ranted about Dan Cathy’s insensitive and bigoted comments, you have been duped…
Those of you who have supported Chick-Fil-A by your reverse-boycott, leading to what may be the best one-day sales ever, you have been duped…
Those of you who have been incensed at the vitriol and the mudslinging, and the political posturing on both sides of the debate, you have been duped…
We all have been duped by a media (both righwing- and leftwing-) that sought to feed the frenzy surrounding a polarizing issue and make it THE issue of the election and our summer. Because making fun of the NBC coverage of the Olympics can only go so far, because watching the efforts of our wanna-be-champions is not enough dirty laundry to feed the talking-heads, because the media believed we, the American public, would take this and ‘run with it’… and we did.
We tweeted and Facebook’ed outrage and fed the fire of vociferous debate with rancor and hatred and accusations of bigotry and racism and whatever ‘isms we could think up… We talked about it, we made signs, we shouted and tweeted some more. Those of us with time photo-shopped pictures for our news feed and those of us without time shared them at the speed of hatred across the digital page.
But not hatred for a people… not hatred for an idea… not even hatred for an opinion…
This was hatred for civility, common sense, and truth.
Did any one of you read Dan Cathy’s comments in their original place? Did any one of you think to see if they were meant to even speak to the issue of Gay Marriage at all??!!!
Here are the offending words:
Some have opposed the company’s support of the traditional family. “Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position.
“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.
“We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized.
“We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
I doubt most of the talking heads read the original statement, because had they done so, this whole issue would have been over before it began. Dan Cathy’s statement was a statement of support for the family at the end of an article about how his Christianity and ethical beliefs have helped build a company who supports the family. Is it because he uses the words ‘traditional family’ or because he referred to the ‘biblical definition of the family unit’ when speaking to the Baptist Press?
If you really would like to escape the vice of exploitation I dare you to read the entire article at the link below. Print it out and show it to your friends. Post the link to your wall. Go on, I dare you. Because if you do not you, too are a part of the problem.
http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=38271
It is time for you and I to stop pandering to the wishes of the media to have a frenzied debate about an important topic based upon a man’s comments taken out of context and upon whom they have bestowed the title of lightning rod. If we are going to debate, let’s begin that debate with a stand on the facts and some sort of civility. Otherwise we might as well crawl back into whatever cave from which we let the news media crawl out.
(dismount from soap box)
