A coordinated culture-war campaign targets museums, corporations, universities, law firms, and federal agencies with similar attack lines and tactics. The campaign quickly moved from denouncing the Smithsonian to assailing Cracker Barrel after a routine logo and interior refresh. Corporate rebranding aimed at younger customers led to retiring the Uncle Herschel imagery and brightening store interiors. Rightwing figures amplified outrage over the branding change, turning a commonplace marketing decision into a political flashpoint. The pattern reveals a broader effort to police cultural symbols and pressure institutions and businesses to conform to a politicized agenda.
First they came for the Smithsonian. Then they came for Cracker Barrel. Whether it's the museums or the corporations or the universities, law firms, federal departments and agencies the attack lines of the Trump culture war and its culture warriors are the same. The vicious full-scale assault on the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain after the company naively wandered on to the battle zone by altering its Old Timer logo exposes the cynicism of the whole operation
At the company headquarters in Lebanon, Tennessee, the Uncle Herschel Memorial features statues of Uncle Herschel seated on a bench listening to a Cracker Barrel waitress. Marketing research, however, showed that the rickety ambience was off-putting to a younger suburban clientele. So Uncle Herschel was retired, the logo cleaned up with just the brand name front and center, the interiors with dark brown log cabin walls whitewashed and more brightly lit.
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