I have become a curmudgeon. Here is what I want you to know, my sweethearts, and you can take it or leave it.

Eat the fast food chicken or don’t eat the fast food chicken at Chik-Fil-A. I don’t give a damn. I don’t eat there for my own personal reasons but you can eat there three times a day, seven days a week and most folks aren’t going to lose any sleep over it. Eat where you want to. Chose to do what you want to do and in turn others will also do what they want to do.

Here is what I do know: there are a lot of great local restaurants out there being financed by your neighbors, whether you know them or not but who live in your community.  There are local pubs, bakeries and restaurants that employ local people who are earning a living just as they are in corporate chains. I want people to be employed. I just like to see the little guy win so I tend to eat local and consistently seek it out. I also on occasion must have a Hot Ham and Cheese from Hardees which is like crack much the same way others are with this mystical chicken whose owners are folks I chose not to support.

That’s my choice. It’s what I do.

Once again, do what you want to do.

As politicians clamor to get a piece of the PR fury that is going on right now about a subpar chicken chain, small businesses aren’t always given that kind of media attention.

Thus Chik-Fil-A wins. Both sides of the aisle are pushing a message where we are talking about civil rights and, for God’s Sake, chicken moguls who I personally disagree with. We are also talking about the first amendment which goes both ways. The civil rights message is important and remains so, the chicken company is getting free advertising in this fight which will be forgotten in a couple of weeks as we move on to something else. Will we still be talking about civil equality? I sure hope so.

So eat up if you want to or don’t go if you don’t want to. Just remember, bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.

There is an election tomorrow. Why aren’t we talking about that?