Cracker Barrel execs play the Contrition card. But might there be more to all this than meets the eye?

Few stories grabbed national attention quite like the Cracker Barrel rebrand did this year. Even amid endless high-profile developments in Washington, the Cracker Barrel rebrand stood out as offensive to Americans everywhere.

Like Bud Light’s partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, Cracker Barrel’s new look felt like an attack on an American institution from an out-of-touch C-suite that bought into the leftist idea of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The backlash was so severe that the company publicly slammed the brakes on their modern makeover and promised Americans they weren’t changing a thing.

Despite this course correction, it was clear that someone at the top had lost the plot, and when Cracker Barrel shareholders voted for board nominees, DEI consultant Gilbert Dávila was not one of them. As I reported on Thursday, Dávila resigned from his position.

Nice that the clueless Wokester shit-slurper is gone and all, but come ON now: the Executive Suite screws the pooch this badly, and all the CB brain-trust can manage is to dump one lousy consultant over it? Looks like the ol’ Barrel is still et up with the dumbass at the higher levels.

That said, here’s where things start to smell a little funny.

Now, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino, who survived the shareholder vote, is sitting down for interviews, and her first is with Glenn Beck.

In an interview that took place at a Cracker Barrel location, Beck asked them directly what happened to lead them to such a “stupid” decision, comparing it to Coca-Cola’s “new recipe.”

“Our guests have a right to be upset,” Masino told Beck. “We messed up. The intent was not ideological. It was not to put the old version of Cracker Barrel in a box. It was not the intent whatsoever.”

Later, Beck went on to ask if the company had “embraced DEI as a culture.” Masino, seemingly giving the most sterile answer she could, told Beck that Cracker Barrel has always tried to be a welcoming place for everyone. Thankfully, Beck pressed the question by asking if political statements were intended from the rebrand.

“No, it’s pancakes,” said Masino.

I find it very interesting that the conversation was steered into what Cracker Barrel was doing wrong in terms of their food and service by Doug Hisel, the Senior Vice President, who also took part in the interview.

Which jibes rather nicely with all the other stuff I’ve read saying that Cracker Barrel was hemorrhaging customers, employees, and money thanks to ever-crappier food, unclean restaurants, insolent, glacier-slow service, etc well before the ill-considered rebrand ever happened. Which kinda tells me that CB high muckety-mucks have had nothing but disdain, dislike, and outright animosity for their most diehard, core customers for a goodish while now, and almost certainly still feel the same way. Which, in turn, means that Cracker Barrel’s troubles and woe aren’t by any stretch over yet.

If Masino is telling the truth, and this rebrand wasn’t at all DEI-driven, then it was incredibly short-sighted at best. However, it’s pretty clear that Cracker Barrel was involved in DEI-related activities and was becoming increasingly friendly with leftist causes. As Fox News reported through an interview with Robby Starbuck, the restaurant chain kept adopting more and more LGBTQ+ themes…

And now, we come to the main reason I wanted to post on this in the first dang place. Ready, everybody?

Starbuck highlights Cracker Barrel’s support for LGBTQ+ organizations and events, such as Nashville Pride, River City Pride and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

He also noted that the company displayed rocking chairs with rainbow colors and LGBTQ+ insignia. The company even went so far as to place one in its Tennessee corporate office. Rocking chairs are practically synonymous with Cracker Barrel, with the restaurant’s long porches lined with them at locations nationwide.

“The fact that it’s located there is important to this story because what’s happened here is a microcosm of the parasitic operating procedure of left-wing activists,” Starbuck said. “They don’t just wanna force their soulless, godless, hedonistic vision of the future onto blue hellscapes that their party controls.

“No, it’s much more important to them that they shove it down into your towns, into your kids’ schools and into your way of life. So, sticking a pro-trans rocking chair into their headquarters in a predominantly conservative town is exactly the type of thing they revel in doing.”

Oh, HELL yeah—nice rip, Rob. Bold mine, natch, because that shit just rocks.