Cracker Barrel Crack-Up

     Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Everything seemed better in the past and businesses that catered to nostalgia have gained, in some minds, mythical status (and sub-mythical sales) while others are condemned for not having the logo or motif from their childhood. In the case of many restaurants, particularly fast food restaurants, the reason is simple: Fewer and fewer people are dining in and even fewer are going for some ambience; people are increasingly just picking up the food via drive through or just ordering in via an “app” like Door Dash or Uber Eats. When that happens, companies optimize their logo to be readily discernable on a small phone app rather than in some large sign that in many places is impracticable, or even illegal.   Such was the case with the chain restaurant Cracker Barrel, but this time with culture war cringe.

     The replacement of the older, more complex sign and logo with a simpler one caused an online apoplectic fit, with one politician even comparing this with an attack on Christianity due to his finding Jesus in their parking lot (allegedly). Some even went to far as to call it “woke”.

     Woke? As much as one might dispise the design, there was nothing particularly “woke” aobut it. It didn’t even devolve into the “globohomo” corporate design we are seeing more of.   What we ‘ve seen is nothing short of exploitation of nostalgia for political point scoring. Why would a politician or political entity complain, aside from virtue signaling. What is the government supposed to do? Regulate logos so they conform to some thin veneer of cultural aesthetics?

     It’s not like this is going to fix a real problem like the debt or anything.

     But nah, it’s just easier to declare this the “frontlines” of the “culture wars” in hyperbolic fashion, just as the once venerable Hillsdale College—who prove that not taking Federal money ain’t no protection that you won’t become be coopted by politics and abandon your educational mission and liberal arts tradition—has demonstrated. Seriously, equating a change of logo, something that has happened continuously for decades if not centuries, with desecrating monuments of Founding Fathers and the like is hyperbole bordering on the absolutely idiotic.

Same energy. pic.twitter.com/ONbDdUsbkg

— Hillsdale College (@Hillsdale) August 21, 2025

     This is an embarrassment to what Hillsdale College used to represent and mean.

     Though not as idiotic as agreeing with an avowed Gramsican (i.e. Commie) while histrionically declaring the logo of a corporate chain restaurant a “beloved cultural icon” that is somehow absolutely necessary to “truth-seeking Americans”! This is literally corporate schtick that purportedly smart people are declaring the way, the truth, and the light, for the “saviors” of America like them.

     This chain restaurant is not “tied to the lifestyle and memories of truth-seeking Americans.”   This is pure nostalgia and a demonstration how shallow some people’s view of “culture” actually is.   If the “culture war” has become this vapid and soulless, then how come so many are so invested in so controlling it?   Some want to micromanage society to fit their Trad-LARPing fantasies. American company denounced for not following the Trad-LARPing corporatism police of “WE THE PEOPLE” as revealed to the organic intellectuals”, ‘twould seem.

     Honestly, come people are this far from combining about waiters not wearing enough “flair”. But don’t worry, the brand caved. The many people who went into apoplectic fits will surely enjoy their continued lack of patronage, won’t they.