As the boycotts added up, it felt like you could craft an entire diet based on what certain people are refusing to eat. So, I decided to do just that.
- Food brands have been hit hard by boycotts by the right and left.
- I decided to go on a boycott diet, eating only foods boycotted by the left one day, and only foods boycotted by the right the next.
- Liberals may be missing out on tastier food than conservatives — but there's much more to the story.
In a politically polarized country, what you eat can say a lot about what you believe.
The past two years have seen an unending series of politically motivated boycotts and counterboycotts. People on the left ditched Papa John's after the founder slammed NFL leadership, only for the right to start smashing Keurigs because the brand pulled advertising from Sean Hannity's Fox News show.
With the boycotts adding up, it felt like you could craft an entire diet based on what certain people are refusing to eat.
So, I decided to do just that.
For one day, I would only eat items boycotted by the left and endorsed by the right. The next day, I would do the opposite, feasting on liberals' favorite foods, which conservatives refuse to touch.
The experience would leave me feeling physically ill — and emotionally queasy.
I started the day off with a conservative favorite — Chick-fil-A.
Progressives arguably kicked off the modern era of politically motivated food boycotts in 2012, after Chick-fil-A donated to anti-LGBT groups and its CEO voiced opposition to same-sex marriage.
If you look at Chick-fil-A's sales, the high-profile boycott was a failure. Just two years after the controversy, Chick-fil-A beat KFC to become the biggest chicken chain in the US in terms of sales.
Among Republicans, the chain still ranks No. 1 on Harris Poll's ranking of the reputations of the 100 most visible companies in the US. Across all consumers, the chain is ranked significantly lower, in the No. 17 slot.
Eating a Chick-fil-A breakfast sandwich, I'm forced to admit that Chick-fil-A's egg and sausage sandwich is superior to almost any other fast-food breakfast offering.
That might be one reason that boycotts of Chick-fil-A didn't actually hurt sales.
Conservatives doubled down to support the chain during the boycott. And, with high-quality food and menu items that no other chain has managed to replicate, apolitical and more progressive customers may have been more inclined to turn a blind eye to executives' viewpoints.
For lunch, I tried to partake in a more short-lived alt-right obsession: Wendy's.
Not every right-wing boycott starts with the alt-right, a loosely allied group of white supremacists, men's-rights activists, and other far-right people. But with the social-media power of many alt-right personalities, they often play a role in starting or amplifying boycotts.
Wendy's was designated the " target="_blank"official burger of the Neo-Nazi Alt-Right movement" by a white-supremacist website after the brand's Twitter account tweeted, then deleted, an image of Pepe the Frog. Once a common meme, Pepe was declared a "hate symbol" by the Anti-Defamation League after being adopted as a symbol of people — primarily the alt-right — spreading racist and anti-Semitic messages.
However, when I showed up at Wendy's, the location was closed for renovation — which may have been for the best. Still, the Wendy's Pepe tweet is a convenient representation of how quickly things can go from light-hearted fun to straight-up hate speech on social media.
With Wendy's closed, I decided it was time to wade into the pizza culture wars.
Papa John's founder and CEO John Schnatter slammed NFL leadership in November over the ongoing controversy over players' protests during the national anthem.
Many on the left trashed Papa John's for Schnatter's comments, promising to boycott the chain. At the same time, people on the right rallied around Papa John's as "America's pizza."
It was a dramatic time for the pizza chain. DiGiorno tweeted implying that Papa John's subpar sales were due to pizza tasting like "dog s—". Neo-nazis and the alt-right came out to support the chain. Finally, after two weeks, Papa John's tweeted that it hadn't meant to disparage the protests — and ended the tweet with the middle-finger emoji.
I have to disagree with the critics — Papa John's pizza does not taste like "dog s—."
It's actually pretty good!
If I'm picking a personal favorite out of the core three (Pizza Hut, Papa John's, Domino's), I'm going to go with Domino's because I like a puffy, almost artificial-tasting crust. But, Papa John's is perfectly fine, especially if you order the pan pizza. And, of course, the chain's cheesy bread is divine.
My day eating like a committed alt-right boycotter wasn't that different from a typical day in my life — just with a bit more fast food.
For dinner, I drank a Coors Light and ate some pasta I had bought from Whole Foods. Both were predictably average, but I had plenty of choices to pick from.
Progressives' semi-official list of boycotted brands is a long one maintained by Shannon Coulter. Coulter started the #GrabYourWallet boycott spreadsheet in October 2016 to encourage people to boycott companies that do business with Trump's family.
So, that means I had a lot of options to choose from.
Currently, there are more than 70 brands on the Grab Your Wallet boycott list, primarily retailers that sell Ivanka Trump's fashion line.
King's Hawaiian, See's Candies, Trident gum, and Welch's all made the "de-prioritized" protest list for advertising on "Celebrity Apprentice," a show that Trump is a producer on, but that is unlikely to return to air. Amazon — and therefore Whole Foods — made the list for advertising on Breitbart and carrying Trump products. MillerCoors and Yuengling made the list for having executives who support Trump or donated to his campaign.
Unfortunately, I found it hard to stomach the conservative diet — literally.
As previously stated, I quite enjoy eating Chick-fil-A and, to a lesser degree, Papa John's.
But, it would be a violation of journalistic ethics not to include the fact that my digestive system violently rebelled against my right-wing diet. As someone who was mostly fine after eating 150 shrimp in one sitting, I can't quite say what went wrong — but something certainly did.
As I dealt with the indigestion, I contemplated food boycotts. For someone who supports same-sex marriage — like, for example, me — boycotting Chick-fil-A makes sense.
But, are boycotts worth it if they only help Chick-fil-A's sales? If the chain treats workers well, is it perhaps actually more progressive than other fast-food chains? Is is unethical to eat a chicken biscuit — or just naive to think most people would be willing to surrender their chicken in the first place?
I hoped adopting a more liberal diet would sooth my troubled mind and stomach.
I started the day with a triumvirate of liberal brands: Kellogg's, Starbucks, and Chobani.
Many on the right ditched Kellogg's after the cereal brand announced in November 2016 that it would no longer advertise on far-right site Breitbart. Starbucks has been boycotted for everything from hiring refugees to featuring a lesbian couple in ads. And, Chobani sued right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after he spread misinformation about the yogurt brand hiring refugees.
This breakfast was not outside of my comfort zone.
While I am a fan of Chick-fil-A and eat it somewhat regularly, I buy Starbucks much more often — roughly once a week. I grew up eating Kellogg's cereal, and Chobani became part of my breakfast routine in college.
Everything I ate for breakfast was predictably tasty and adequate. Alt-right boycotters who are mad about Kellogg's advertising policy aren't missing out on anything groundbreaking, but they are cutting some pretty reliably good cereals out of their diets.
Lunch from Pizza Hut was another story.
Having gone on the record as enjoying Papa John's, I will now say that Pizza Hut — at least from the combination Taco Bell-Pizza Hut in New York City — is very bad.
In keeping with my liberal diet, I wanted to enjoy Pizza Hut. One day after Papa John's CEO blamed subpar sales on NFL players' protests during the national anthem, the CEO of Pizza Hut's parent company, Yum Brands, said the controversy wasn't affecting sales. Support for Pizza Hut immediately exploded online from the left.
However, the personal pizza from the chain was the most offensively bad pizza I have ever consumed. I was only able to finish half of this stale, overly sweet mess.
For dinner, I ate more Whole Foods, which is being boycotted by the right as well as the left.
In February, Trump supporters threatened to boycott Amazon after news broke that it would support Washington State in a federal lawsuit challenging Trump's executive order barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.
And, in June, Trump tweeted that the "Amazon Washington Post" is "FAKE NEWS."
The fact that both the left and the right are boycotting Amazon is one of the things that turns me off from the recent explosion of boycotts. If both sides of the political spectrum are coming out against Amazon, and the company is still wildly successful, are boycotts working at all?
Overall, my two days of dieting only revealed what an absurd position Americans have found themselves in.
I would say conservatives trump liberals when it comes to boycott diets. Then again, eating like an alt-right supporter also left me doubled over in gastronomical distress. You win some, you lose some.
However, comparing boycott diets based on taste — or even their impact on my digestive system — misses the point. Just because Chick-fil-A is more delicious than any other thing I ate doesn't mean it should get a get-out-of-boycotts-free card.
I also found myself wondering what exactly the cut-off line for a boycott was.
For some, it's running ads on a TV show that isn't currently on the air. For others, it's hiring people fleeing war-torn countries who are legally in the US as refugees.
As the lists of boycotted brands add up, I mostly was just exhausted. In 2017, basically every brand wants to avoid taking sides — but, in the Trump era, that's impossible.
"We've never seen something like this — a consumer awakening, if you will," Chris Allieri, the founder of the communications and marketing firm Mulberry & Astor, told me earlier this year, in reference to the rise of consumer boycotts.
To believe in boycotts is to believe in an individual's ability to create change.
Surprisingly, my favorite item from the diet — the one I would most hate to give up — actually revealed the best reason to boycott.
Following boycotts, Chick-fil-A has attempted to move away from its conservative image and cut any talk of politics. Some franchisees have started donating to LGBT Pride events. And, three years after the boycotts started, the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
Basically, the boycott didn't hurt Chick-fil-A's sales, but it did send a message about Americans' increasing support of same-sex marriage.
If I'm optimistic, I can see today's boycotts similarly serving as a way for people to make their voices heard.
Boycotting the NFL, for example, have kept the spotlight on players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality for almost two years. The boycotts may not actually be the one thing impacting NFL ratings, but it's kept the issue in the headlines.
Similarly, Nordstrom dropping Ivanka Trump's line after boycott threats may have been purely motivated by the fashion brand not selling well. However, the boycott helped bring attention to questions about how the Trump family could profit from the president's political power.
Many boycotts can feel like much ado about nothing, adding onto an already lengthy list of perceived slights. However, if protesters can use boycotts to highlight their values — identifying what Americans will and will not tolerate — then it is possible for them to actually create lasting change. At least, I hope so.
Strategy: I ate only foods that have been boycotted by the alt-right and liberals — and it revealed an absurd truth about Trump's America
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