(Mmm…soup & Saltine Caucasians!)
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It began as a joke. No, not Hillary’s wardrobe.
It was the idea of an utterly innocent guy named Ryan Koch. Koch, fed up with political correctness and “offensive” outrage, started a sarcastic petition to force the famous family restaurant Cracker Barrel to change its “racially offensive” name.
Racially offensive? A cracker barrel? Offensive to which race?
White people.
Yes, white people – that historically downtrodden, oppressed group of, um, non-illegal immigrants, collectively sub-classified as, um, Euro-Americans. According to Mr. Koch’s parody, the name Cracker Barrel is an offensive slur to, um, people of no color, because “cracker” was once a demeaning term aimed at Caucasians, much like being called honky, or peckerwood, or Al Gore.
The anti-Cracker petition was originally posted at Change.org, a very silly website that nonetheless takes itself very seriously as a “change agent” for all mankind, as long as you’re a liberal mankind. And yet, the petition managed…again, remember, this began as a joke…the petition managed to collect over sixteen thousand supporters. Yes, you read that correctly. Sixteen thousand more-or-less overly-medicated people hopped on board to “sign” satire.
Now you begin to understand how car dealers can get away with promising to sell people a car “BELOW DEALER COST!!!” – for less than they paid for it.
But wait. According to Koch, there’s an even deeper veiled insult wickedly encrypted in the name Cracker Barrel. According to his petition:
“…their logo stereotypes, um, Al Gore Lives Matter, as people who just sit on chairs all day and lean against what appears to be a bourbon barrel…claiming we are all a bunch of alcoholics.”
So. It escalates. Now, the barrel’s not even stuffed with white people. It’s full of booze.
According to my exhaustive research, which I meant to do, usage of the pejorative “cracker” has been around for quite some time (pejorative is an old Latin term meaning so’s your mother). At one time in American history, free-lance insulters used “cracker” to refer to poor white people, particularly those in Virginia, Georgia, and – if you’re still buying Hillary’s narrative – the post-White House Clintons.
Some cracker-expert historians (crackologists) suspect the term was a shortened version of “whip-cracker,” since the aforementioned lowly white folk managed to earn a meager living by manual labor: driving livestock from place to place with a whip. “Cracker” was also used more generically, in reference to bandits, highwaymen, and other lawless folk, like the US Congress.
In fact, the first documented use of the term actually occurred over 400 years ago, in William Shakespeare’s stage play, King John, the story of Elton John’s father. King John was published around the year 1590, when the only people yet in America were the Washington Redskins, and Dick Clark. In the play, one character employed the then-common insult “craker” to describe another character as an obnoxious bloviator (no, not Bill O’Reilly):
What craker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?
Okay, maybe it was Bill O’Reilly.
Anyway, Koch’s non-petition petition got quite a bit of feedback…not counting the 16,000 signatories who still think they’ll be getting a great deal on a used car. Here are some online comments, exactly as posted:
- KEEP THE CRACKER IN BAREL
- There is now a petition going around to change Cracker Barrels name to Caucasian Barrel. I want it to stay Cracker Barrel!
- Leave Cracker Barrel Alone!
- Stop Pig Wrestling in Wisconsin
As always in this nation’s absurd politically correct dance, the cultural discussion eventually gets to the “where does it all end?” part. How far will we let this embarrassing, whiny nonsense go?
Here’s how far: I’m told there’s a new animated movie in theaters, a not-for-kids comedy titled Sausage Party, and some jittery putz is complaining because a cartoon potato singing “Danny Boy” might offend Irish people.
Stop me if I’ve missed some history here, but I’m fairly sure that, by now, the sons and daughters of Ireland have made their peace with potatoes.
Unless they’re cracker potatoes.