Originally Posted by
mosburger
I remember reading some press stories during the Bush administatrion years about a political divide between chain and non-chain restaurants.
If I recall them correctly, conservatives were suspicious of stand-alone eateries, viewing them as too "liberal" and "non-conformist". The conservative thing to do, at least during that era, was apparently to dine at chain restaurants that offered no disturbing surprises.
At the risk of being OMNI... This sounds like political claptrap. It's a cheap
ad hominem criticism. It's not bad enough that conservatives want to start WWIII, let the poor die of malnutrition, and personally kick your dog, but now they <gasp> eat at Chili's?
If someone's going make an
ad hominem attack they should at least get the stereotype right. Take the simplest stereotype about conservatives: they distrust change. In the 1980s chain restaurants were change. They were growing rapidly, opening many new franchises, and displacing familiar, locally owned restaurants. Conservatives were the last people eating at Pat's Main Street Cafe before Pat retired early and closed the business, having lost out to the chain restaurant out by the new mall with the neon lights and expensive national advertising campaign with the annoying actors and rhyming slogans. Now those conservatives eat at Chili's because they have to, ordering the Old Timer burger and grumbling about how it's twice the price they paid at Pat's.