LA Times Oct 23
What In-N-Out’s standoff on vaccinations reveals about us
It’s delusional for Californians to think chain’s niceness was apolitical
THE IN-N-OUT Burger in Alhambra. One of the chain’s restaurants in San
Francisco made national headlines this month for refusing to enforce
COVID-19 vaccination checks on customers. (Carolina A. Miranda Los
Angeles Times)
GUSTAVO ARELLANO
Last week, on the day a San Francisco In-N-Out made national headlines
for refusing to enforce COVID-19 vaccination checks on customers , I did
something I rarely do.
I went to In-N-Out.
I don’t hate the company, but I have spent the last three years tweeting
hundreds of times, “In-N-Out is overrated” and “In-N-Out fanboys are the
worst” to friends and foes alike.
It’s fun to troll people with the truth: That the Irvine-based chain’s
burgers are pretty good but nowhere near great. That while they pay
employees good wages, their French fries taste like the crinkle paper
used for packaging . That In-N-Out’s branding — T-shirts with classic
muscle cars, a palm-tree motif, a jingle that sounds like a throwaway
track on K-Earth — is cheap nostalgia for people whose salad days are
behind them.
My stance has long been a lonely one, as evidenced by the company’s
continued expansion across the West and legions of devoted fans who
hound me for my heresy.
But In-N-Out’s surprisingly outspoken anti-vaccine mandate move — Chief
Legal and Business Officer Arnie Wensinger announced in a statement that
the company “refuse[d] to be the vaccination police” for a policy it
considers “intrusive, improper, and offensive” — has brought more people
to my side than ever before. Now, my social media accounts are filled
with former customers who vow to never again chow down on a Flying
Dutchman washed down with pink lemonade.
I thought about the uproar as I pulled off the 5 Freeway and went to the
drive-through line at In-N-Out at the Tustin Market Place. I wanted to
see whether the company was really as pandejo as critics make them out
to be, and whether In-N-Out was going to pay a price as their entry fee
into America’s pandemic wars.
Kinda, and no.
The line snaked around a parking lot, and diners packed the restaurant’s
indoor and outdoor tables even though it was about 9:30 at night. A
masked employee took my order for a double-double animal-style
cheeseburger with mustard, pickles and chopped peppers; an unmasked one
gave me my receipt. Unmasked workers toiled in the kitchen; masked ones
took walk-in orders behind plexiglass.
I thought about how a COVID-19 outbreak at two In-N-Out locations in
Colorado infected more than 120 employees. I thought about public
officials who don’t want to consider the possibility that maybe the
company is right. Maybe forcing restaurants to check the vaccine status
of customers is a hassle that doesn’t fully stop the spread of COVID-19
(full disclosure: My wife runs a restaurant where masks are mandatory
because even a vaccinated person can still transmit the disease to
others — and the disease is still going around ).
As another masked employee handed me my order and I drove off, I finally
realized who the true fool is when it comes to In-N-Out: All of us.
We’re spending so much time debating the political posturing of one
company because it’s not just any company: It’s In-N-Out. One of those
rare things Californians from Redding to Chula Vista, rich and poor, red
and blue, can agree upon, like a love of Huell Howser or a hatred for
smug New Yorkers.
This mega-company has long fostered a feel-good, small-town ethos to
become an avatar for the idealized California life like no other company
has — more affordable than Patagonia, less bro-y than Tesla, not as
omnipresent as Disney.
Over its 70-plus years, the tiny Baldwin Park burger stand opened by
Harry and Esther Snyder transformed into an empire thanks to descendants
who masterfully played us like chumps. They exploited one of the worst
attributes of the California psyche: mass delusion.
To paraphrase Joan Didion, we tell ourselves lies in order to live in
California, and In-N-Out proves that.
This is a company that has never changed what it is: a nostalgia factory
that promises a trip back to a time where things were simpler and more
conservative. Hidden biblical verses on cups and wrappers land on
salvation through Jesus Christ as their takeaway instead of some of the
other things Christ said that might inconvenience In-N-Out’s corporate
philosophy. Like rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, or
that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (those verses are Matthew
22:21 and Matthew 19:24, respectively, by the way).
In-N-Out has consistently donated tens of thousands of dollars to the
California Republican Party and hundreds of thousands of dollars to
restaurant and business lobbying groups.
While campaign finance records show employees have donated to Democratic
candidates, In-N-Out Chief Operating Officer Mark Taylor and his wife
Traci (the half-sister of CEO Lynsi Snyder, the granddaughter of Harry
and Esther whom Forbes estimates to be worth $4.2 billion) donated more
than $15,000 to the national Republican Party and Donald Trump through
the 2020 election cycle.
The company has double-doubled down on its rightward creep in recent
years, as Lynsi Snyder has become more open about her evangelical
beliefs. But its politics were grilled onto its iconic logo from the
start: That yellow arrow that zips atop the company’s name? It rises
leftward before swinging down a hard right.
They’ve never hidden who they were, yet In-N-Out sold a fantasy of
apolitical niceness that most Californians slurped up like one of the
chain’s fantastic strawberry milkshakes. The fooled include even Vice
President Kamala Harris. She got In-N-Out for staffers and reporters who
flew back with her to Washington this September after an appearance with
California Gov. Gavin Newsom at an anti-recall election rally — never
mind that In-N-Out had contributed $40,000 to the California Republican
Party in July.
It takes a delusional Californian to think In-N-Out is anything more
than what it is, just like it takes a delusional Californian to build
houses in fire country and then rebuild them when infernos inevitably
burn them down. Or take showers longer than five minutes. Or live with
no earthquake kit, or think online shopping is ethical.
Why did so many fall for In-N-Out’s ruse? It’s more than just the
offerings, which — again — are better than good but not anywhere close
to the revelation acolytes make them out to be. It’s because in this
famously fractured nation-state, Californians yearn for a collective
hero, something or someone who rises above our ideological and
geographic divides to connect us.
But they’re just as imperfect as the rest of us — and that’s a good
thing. If In-N-Out continues to issue strident news releases about
government overreach seemingly cribbed from a Tucker Carlson tirade,
maybe Californians will be convinced to drop our collective delusions
once and for all.
As for my double-
double? I ate it on the drive back home — tasty, but not worth the wait.
The Habit chain is better.
I found the biblical verse on its wrapper and looked up Nahum 1:7, which
reads, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he
knoweth them that trust in him.”
A promise of comfort as a reward for unquestioning faith: That’s what
California is all about.
--
Rosalind Bresnahan, Ph.D.
Collective of Coordinating Editors
Latin American Perspectives
Home: 500 Edgerton Dr., San Bernardino, CA 92405
Phone: 909-881-1229
E-mail: rosalind568@xxxxxxxxx
The marriage of ignorance and force always generates
unfathomable evil, an evil that is unseen by perpetrators
who mistake their own stupidity and blindness for innocence.
Chris Hedges, The Great Forgetting, Truthdig, Jan. 10, 2016