"Isn’t there something creepy about Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz having... 'asked his Washington-area employees to write "Come Together" on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff'?"

Asks Mickey Kaus.

Did Schultz take a poll of his employees–sorry, “partners,” he calls them–before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he “asked” his “partners” to write “Preserve the Family” on the outside of cups and containers?

I’m not saying what Schultz did is or should be illegal, certainly not in a Citizen’s United world. If he wants to run a hybrid coffee-shop-political-organization, that’s fine with me. But maybe he should have made that clear to his workers when they signed up.

What troubles me about the slogan "Come Together" is that it's a pretty obvious reference to the Beatles song that begins with Lennon saying "shoot me" over and over. Given the recent massacre — and the fact that Lennon himself was shot to death — it's not good resonance.

As for an employer telling employees what to say to customers, I've got no legalistic problem with that. The first job I ever had was as a waitress, and I was required to greet the customers with the lengthy "Hello, my name is Ann, and I will be your waitress tonight." How do you give that wooden line a good reading?

I'd much rather say "Come Together," especially if I was serving muddy water, brewed with a mojo filter.

"I don't care about Chick Fil A or gay marriage. I do care about observing my friends engaging in groupthink right there in front of me...."

Writes Chip Ahoy, in the Chick-fil-A thread a few posts down.

Don't like that. It's a very unsightly thing to behold, everyone standing around agreeing that some old man who expressed a traditional opinion personifies HATE. Every happy gathering becomes some kind of mini political caucus where lines of thought are stroked and combed. I must toss a screwdriver into that. But in the end I am enjoying the company of other people less and less. It's not that I don't respect different opinions, it's that I don't respect poorly developed opinions and spoon-fed opinions, it's seeing my friends' personalities subsumed to the most radical expressions. So I go to a party and the conversation is whatever the present day activists out there say is is and gone are any unique points of view or any unique expressions. Conversations with the DNC, conversations with the most political active, not conversations with my friends, they are all mouthpieces now.

And then:

I just realized how to deal with that. Comically turn the speaker into into the person they sound like but pick an egregious example. "Tell me Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I'm very curious about this, what did that owner of Chick Fil A say exactly?" Just acknowledge that you're speaking to someone else.

Inquire thoughtfully, "Who should I put on to respond?"

Since we're using other peoples' words, other peoples' thoughts.

Ha ha. That reminds me: Back in the 1970s, one time — one time! — I defended Richard Nixon for something, and for quite a while after that, my then-husband thought it was funny to call me "Baruch."

"61% Hold Favorable Opinion of Chick-fil-A."

Says Rasmussen.

What righties don't get about Manny Castro and graffiti.

Twitchy thinks it's leading a righteous fight, stirring up outrage about the "Tastes Like Hate" graffiti, spray painted on a Chick-fil-A by "Hollywood artist Manny Castro," who stepped forward to do an interview at HuffPo.

Castro said he vandalized the restaurant because Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day was “the same thing” as “Christians protesting blacks marrying whites” 40 years ago.

Uh huh. Thanks, genius, we’ve seen the photos of those intolerant hatemongers enjoying chicken with their families.

Castro also told HuffPo, “It’s paint on a wall. It got removed in less than an hour. It’s not that much of a crime — it’s a protest.”

Not “that much of a crime”?...

Uh huh, thanks, genius to you, Twitchy... and to all the deaf-to-pop-culture dupes who run with this meme. Do you think there is any way that Castro can be hurt by this? You've put photographs of his artwork out there, you've planted his slogan "Tastes Like Hate" in our minds, you've promoted him as the bad boy he wants to be, and the more outrage that's expressed the more successful he is on his own terms.

You're quoting the police as saying they hadn't heard about it, but will look into it, which doesn't make it sound as though Castro's in a whole lot of trouble with the criminal law, and you're slavering with hope that you can change that, but you don't get it that an arrest would only further promote the art career of this erstwhile nonentity.

The most-liked comment over there, from one "lazypadawan," is: "When I last checked, tagging and other sorts of vandalism are crimes. Should we do a #arrestMannyCastroNOW hashtag until the PD locks him up?" Uh, genius, do you have any idea how stupid that is? Or is lazypadawan really Manny Castro or one of his "Hollywood artist" friends?

If you don't know about the various artists who have used graffiti to leverage a career, look it up. Here's a book called "The Faith of Graffiti." It was written by Norman Mailer. In 1973. But that was a long time ago. Maybe you remember this.

Please don't use the comments to instruct me about the scrumptiousness of bait.

A kiss-in should be a love-in or it shouldn't be done at all.

Protests express opposition and therefore usually anger. Expressing love is inconsistent with anger. So if you're going to use a gesture of love for protest, you've got a special problem. Appropriating an expression of love for hostile purposes is a dangerous matter. It's what makes rape so horrible.

Think about it. Most of us love sex but if we were beset by a hostile assailant, we would prefer a punch in the face to sexual intercourse.

I'm looking at pictures from the Chick-fil-A kiss-in. These were people who wanted to demonstrate support for same-sex marriage. (I agree with them on that issue, by the way.) As their form of protest, they chose kissing — individuals of the same sex, kissing in restaurants that are associated with opposition to same-sex marriage. So the idea was, go where you think you are not loved — even though there's no evidence that Chick-fil-A treats gay customers with less respect and friendliness than straight customers — and do something you think will upset them.

Now, restaurants generally don't want anybody making out, so you've chosen behavior that would be disruptive to a restaurant's business whether the kissing couples are same or opposite sex. The form of expression is offensive and not like the old civil rights demonstrations where black people sat at lunch counters and were not served. They simply acted like customers — good customers — and the only reason it worked as a demonstration was that the store only served food to white people, the policy the protesters very successfully demonstrated was wrong. Kissing at Chick-fil-A does nothing to show what's wrong about anything Chick-fil-A is doing. It's just displaying hostility to the place.

And it's displaying hostility with kissing. So what have they done? They've perverted kissing, which should be an expression of love. Ironic, considering that the gay rights movement seeks to dispel the belief that homosexuality is perverted.

It's a challenge to protest with gestures of love. It can be done, but it can't be done with hate or love is not love. We think of hippies and their love-ins (and be-ins). I don't remember those demonstrations involving targeting any person or business. Yes, those hippies upset the squares — the straight people — and through what they claimed was love they made themselves dislikable to people they knew would be bothered by the way they acted, but that just goes to show how hard it is to use love to express something other than love.

ADDED: Here's a sign in a photograph chosen to top a favorable presentation of the kiss-in: "We're Here/We're Queer/& We're Not Eating." See how different that is from the old lunch-counter sit-ins? These 2 men are flaunting their taking up space in a commercial establishment without being customers. They are kissing as a way of saying: We're hostile to you.

The second sign says "I [heart] my boyfriend just as much as you love your spouse!," but the man is failing to demonstrate the equivalence between him and his boyfriend and "you" and your spouse because unlike the black sit-in protesters, they are not behaving like the people they want to say they are equal to.

The civil rights sitters-in behaved like ordinary customers, causing the store to behave in a way that onlookers could see was ugly. But since a straight couple doesn't go to a restaurant and stand around kissing without buying anything, the 2 men are not demonstrating sameness, but difference. An onlooker's reaction could be: No, you are not like me and my spouse because we only go to restaurants to buy food, and when we do, we treat everyone around us with respect, and when we kiss we do it in an appropriate setting and only to express love. Again, I see a terrible irony: They've sent the message of perverted love.

IN THE COMMENTS: As my whimsy leads me reminds us: "Judas perverted kissing when he betrayed Jesus."

I was thinking about Jesus when I wrote this post. Not in the context of Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss, but Jesus telling us to love our enemy. If someone strikes you on the face, instead of striking back, turn the other cheek, an invitation to the assailant to strike you a second time. That's how much love Jesus expects from you. That's a demonstration of love to the onlooker, who receives the message, the kind of demonstration that was made — to brilliant effect — in the civil rights era.

"Drive-through lanes were backed up and dining rooms were packed at Chick-fil-A restaurants across the nation today..."

"... as hundreds of thousands of people turned out to support the fast food chain after it came under attack when the CEO [Dan Cathy] said he opposes gay marriage."

[S]everal openly gay restaurant workers... said working for the company was difficult in light of the controversy because often times employees say homophobic things to them, thinking the comments are welcome at Chick-fil-A.

An openly gay 24-year-old employee said a man came in and say he supported Cathy's comments then 'continues to say something truly homophobic, like "I'm so glad you don't support the queers, I can eat in peace."'

Another gay employee added: '(It's) constantly having people come up to you and say, "I support your company, because your company hates the gays."'

Hmmm. It's a chicken sandwich, people. America needs to calm down.

ADDED: If you have trouble understanding my position, I spell out 6 principles here.

AND: Quite aside from gay marriage... should a man be named "Cathy"?

"What I think is funny is that if you have the same view on gay marriage that Obama had when he was elected, now you’re an enemy of humanity or something."

"It’s some sort of, I don’t know, Liberal Fascism or something...." — says Instapundit, aptly, re Chick-Fil-A and Chicago.

And here's Eugene Volokh on the obviousness of the First Amendment violation.

"Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values," said Rahm Emanuel, ironically demonstrating that Chicago values are not American values.

ADDED: Right now, at Drudge:



(Click image to enlarge. The small text in the upper left says: "Rahm Rejects CHICK-FIL-A: 'Not Chicago Values.'"