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Professor Jacobson Claims Government Idiocy Hurt Chick-fil-A

As much as I like the professor and as often as I read his work and enjoy his take on things, this just strikes me as silly.

Back in July, when Alderman Moreno and Chicago Mayor Emanuel decided that the best way to represent “Chicago Values” was to penalize a company for its president’s personal views, Chick-fil-A had a brand rating of 62 according to rankings by researcher YouGov.

New statistics released by the company show that the war waged by these government officials on a company seeking to provide jobs to their city has been in some part damaging to the Chick-fil-A brand. From the 62 rating on July 10 to when it sunk as low as 30 on August 20, it is clear that the brand has suffered.

Somehow, Professor Jacobson has managed to take a collection of actions by Dan Cathy and the negative reactions they created and turned them into “See? Look what the government did!”

No one in my world is more anti-government than I am. That being said, blaming the idiots in Chicago, New York, and Massachusetts for the brand decline ignores the fact that people were repulsed by Cathy’s remarks and by the fact that his money was funding organizations that made such outlandish hateful comments and advocated for, essentially, government punishment for being gay.

It’s fine to say that some of that negative perception was probably started by government meddling, but chalking it all up to that is intellectually dishonest because, in essence, it implies that everyone agreed with Dan Cathy until the government told people not to.

That’s ludicrous.

If the brand suffered, then maybe the brand should look inward as should its supporters.

3 October 2012 ·