Reality Curb Stomps David French’s Psycho Fantasies—Again
The article discusses the recent failure of Cracker Barrel’s $700 million rebranding effort, which was abruptly abandoned after notable backlash. Key executives and the branding consultant were fired, and the company publicly apologized, acknowledging that the redesign and new logo were a mistake. The failed rebrand caused turmoil within the company and led to a decline in its stock value.
The piece also critiques a New York Times columnist,David French,who had dismissed the rebranding controversy as a fabricated right-wing outrage lacking substance. The author argues that French was fully wrong in his assessment and failed to anticipate the real consequences of the failed effort.
As a further twist, the article highlights how David French has a history of extreme and flawed commentary, referencing his past claims that churches were terrorist training centers preparing for insurrection. The author uses this to illustrate French’s consistent disconnection from reality.
the piece portrays the Cracker Barrel debacle as a clear example of a company misreading its market and mishandling a rebranding, while also serving as a critique of certain media figures who minimize or distort such events.
Forgive me, because I’m about to beat a dead horse. But there’s a twist at the end, so hang in there.
Last week was the red wedding for Cracker Barrel.
Some senior people who were in the headquarters last Monday weren’t there anymore as the weekend drew near, some old managers from an earlier corporate culture came back to rewind the clock, and the branding consultant who advised on the now-fatally-wounded rebranding effort was sent packing. The new logo departed. The redesigned stores were acknowledged as a failure and an embarrassment.
“Sorry!” the company explained. “Sorry! Sorry! We’ll stop!”
See what they said about the redesign? “We won’t continue with it.” The whole thing collapsed, a $700 million rebrand that slammed into a concrete wall and exploded.
It remains to be seen how much the rebranding of the rebranding will matter. This is what Cracker Barrel stock looks like in the last month:
Now, a reminder: New York Times columnist David French explained, just over a month ago, that the controversy over Cracker Barrel’s rebranding was an absurd fake crisis ginned up by right-wing idiots who were just pretending that something had gone wrong at the company. Along with the Sydney Sweeney thing, he concluded that we were watching some “completely frivolous and meaningless cultural disputes,” examples of the way “right-wing media both mobilizes its base and bends political reality.”
If you believed that the Cracker Barrel rebranding was poorly done and would alienate the company’s customers, you were falling for an invented reality that was completely meaningless and frivolous. Then Cracker Barrel fired a bunch of managers and its rebranding consultant, abandoned the rebranding, and apologized profusely, while its stock plummeted.
If you listened to French, if you trusted the op-ed pages of The New York Times to explain the world to you, your understanding of the most basic outline of factual reality was flipped over, turned precisely upside down. He was only wrong about literally every single detail, completely missing what was happening, what it meant, and what would happen in the near future as a result of it.
To listen to this idiot is to abuse your own mind, trapping yourself in the confines of an absurd house of ideological mirrors. He is inevitably wrong, completely wrong, reliably wrong to the point of absolute and unyielding madness.
Now, the twist:
David French, 2022: Churches are terrorist training centers, and churchgoing Americans are preparing to attack the country in a vast wave of right-wing insurrectionist violence. When you drive past one of the Lutheran terror cells, you’re looking at the next 9/11, because here comes the Christian nationalist insurrection that they’re prepping for in the pews.
David French wins. Paul Krugman and Jim Cramer are America’s second and third contrary indicators. This man is where reality goes to be strangled to death.
This article is republished from the author’s Substack, with permission.
Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. Find his Substack, “Tell Me How This Ends,” here.
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