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Denny’s the diner chain that has had to payout because of numerous racial discrimination lawsuits – based on race, disability and, oh yeah, religion + race, and gender identity and expression, is, I guess, trying to boost its cred with the gun-toting crowd on the PR front these days. It has released a new ad, titled “Greatness,” that boosts – the Second Amendment in noteworthy fashion. (WND featured the dialogue):
“Kids,” the father in the commercial asks after receiving a “Midwestern Meat & Potatoes Sandwich” he’s clearly admiring, “do you know what it is that makes this country great?
“The Constitution our forefathers wrote?” asks his daughter in return.
“Our unified belief in the American dream?” his son suggests.
The other customers in the restaurant then get in on the act, while strains of patriotic music play in the background.
“Our melting-pot heritage that proves our differences really are our strengths?” a man proposes.
“It’s our right to bear arms!” insists an elderly lady, referring to the wording of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
“Yes!” says the father, clearly covering his embarrassment at the profundity of answers offered to his question, which he initially asked about his … sandwich. “Those are some of the great things I was thinking of, as well.”
The commercial ends on a lighter note, with the man’s daughter holding up her teddy bear and asking in confused tone, “Bear arms?”
Based on the chain’s legal history, the melting pot falls way down on that list.
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Bit of a nod there to the Fourth of July scene from Moscow on the Hudson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjjsDhbFhCA
From personal experience, it’s nothing more than a personal right to get a furious case of the shits!
I’ll have a Grand Slam(TM) Breakfast, hold the AK-47.
I have twice in my life eaten at a Denny’s. The second time was to make sure that the first time wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t a fluke. The food was utterly horrible both times and the ambience/service abysmal (I do not blame the staff, but the management — it was that kind of systemic bad service). I would rather eat at a Goodyear Tire store. I didn’t know about their being total assholes as well. How can this chain still exist?
People not in Alaska may not be aware that recently a leader from the “sovereign citizens” movement and head of the Alaska Peacemaker Militia was just recently convicted of, among other things, conspiracy to murder federal law enforcement officers. One of the things that came out during the run-up to the trial is that Cox and his group would hold their own common law “trials” of these officers (and judges) in … wait for it … the Fairbanks Denny’s. He also had the Denny’s court try him on domestic violence charges (he’d been arrested for choking his wife in a moving vehicle). They found him innocent of all charges. Anyway, at least in this corner of Alaska, Denny’s is already associated with gun nuts and right-wing extremists.
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Dearest Melinda,
I can tell from your presence at FDL and the comment to which I am replying that it would be utterly incorrect too include you in my highly prejudicial broadbrush response, but from down here in the lower 48 (and I’ve done real cowboy work, construction and migrant labor),
….
I’m just teasing you…I know what it’s like to live in a red state…please stay in touch with us down here…
Everything’s bigger in Alaska – the gun nuts nuttier, the right-wing wackos wackier, and I’m happy to say that the pinkos are pinker. Everybody’s got guns but only militia-affiliated secessionists hold court (literally) at the world’s northernmost Denny’s.
It’s hard to believe that Denny’s really stands behind the sentiment that making our country great is “Our melting-pot heritage that proves our differences really are our strengths” when the only non-white person in the ad with a speaking role is a server.
In a few places (shout-out to Homer!) the hippies are also hippier. Alaska isn’t all bad.
(…even if the most liberal places in Alaska still have to deal with moose as major garden pests.)