With a lock on the media, the reflexive agreement of the elites, and a mammoth tax-eating government to play with, liberals tend to be insulated from the consequences of their ideas. But in the free market, when reality bites back, it bites back hard.
That’s what the retail chain Target found out last year after it announced in a blog post that anybody at any of its stores could use any restroom he/she/ze wanted, depending on how he/she/ze identified that day. According to an April 6 Yahoo Finance article, the 1.4 million conservatives who pledged to shop #AnywhereButTarget made the chain pay a heavy price.
“Sales fell nearly 6% in the three quarters after the post compared with the same period last year, and same-store sales have dropped every quarter since the post,” Yahoo says. Beyond that, the company ended up dropping $20 million putting single-occupancy restrooms in its stores.
It turns out Target CEO Brian Cornell didn’t approve or know in advance about the happy-talk blog post (“everyone deserves to feel like they belong …”) and feels “flaunt[ing]” the policy caused a “self-inflicted” wound. It’s not that he doesn’t buy the progressive blather. He told CNBC last May that “we are going to continue to embrace our belief of diversity and inclusion.” He just doesn’t think they should have let people know Target was OK with middle aged men peeing with little girls. Go figure.
Still, score one for common sense. And biology.
But the best part of the Yahoo piece comes when it compares the successful Target boycott (accomplished despite an attempt to sabotage it by its internet page host) to the left’s nothing-burger attack on Chick-Fil-A in 2012. Recall owner Dan Cathy admitted to holding the traditional view of marriage and the freakout over what Yahoo calls “Chick-fil-A’s many charitable donations to organizations opposed to same-sex marriage.”
“Despite the backlash, Chick-fil-A’s sales increased 14% in 2012.” Some backlash.
If you’re Cornell, that’s gotta hurt. But at least he/she/ze can identify as virtuous, what with all that diversity and inclusion.
