Starbucks, whose longtime chief executive Howard Schultz pioneered a new wave of liberal corporate activism in the early part of the century, still dominates the coffee scene in college towns and blue-state urban centers. But Black Rifle Coffee, now publicly traded with a $250 billion valuation, is flourishing in suburbs across the country and in cities large and small across the Deep South and Mountain West.
Online, the partisan rift is equally wide. Facebook has become essentially a one-party site, a forum for conservatives — and occasionally for conspiracy theorists — to discuss the perils of immigration and excessive government regulation. Snapchat has become the go-to social network for liberals to share videos calling for voting reform and raising taxes for social programs.
“This is permanently part of the social context of business,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale’s School of Management who has helped chief executives formulate their responses to hot-button issues. “It’s the job of C.E.O.s to elevate issues and explain how it matters to them.”Yet for the most part, corporations did their best to steer clear of the culture wars.
The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump changed all that. Mr. Trump’s positions on issues ranging from immigration to race relations to climate change forced companies to make their positions clear. Oftentimes, under pressure from employees and customers, corporations broke with the president. After Mr. Trump equivocated in his response to an outburst of white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Va., for example, two advisory councils stacked with prominent business leaders disbanded, with many of them repudiating the president and his response.
More than four years of this dynamic finally led many senior Republicans to begin pushing back against big business. This year, as companies rallied against restrictive new voting laws being advanced by Republicans around the country, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told chief executives to stay in their lane.
“My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” he said in April. “It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of America’s greatest political debates.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida posted a video in which he called companies speaking out against Republican laws “woke corporate hypocrites.”
And Stephen Miller, an adviser to Mr. Trump, said on Twitter that big businesses were “openly attacking sovereign U.S. states & the right of their citizens to secure their own elections,” in what he called “a corporate ambush on Democracy.”
John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s International, was ousted from the pizza chain he founded after uttering a racial slur on a corporate conference call. He recently called his exit from the company he started “a crucifixion,” blaming the “progressive elite left” for his downfall.
The hypocrite pot calling the kettle black
Rubio calls companies that speak out woke corporate hypocrites if they speak against bad things the authoritarian GOP does. The hypocrite is the Rubio and the rest of the GOP leadership, not corporations that speak out. Remember, it was the GOP that gave corporations free speech rights, calls them people, calls campaign contributions free speech and coddles them with tax breaks and deregulations that aid in profits and/or disadvantage consumers.
Republican hypocrisy here is unlimited and shameless.
Even more ghastly in the hypocrisy and lies department is McConnell’s warning to corporate America is to stay out of politics because it’s not what corporations are designed for. Like hell corporations aren't designed for politics. They have been doing politics for decades, but just in private and secrecy. What in tarnation does McConnell think corporate lobbyists who secretly lobby himself and other Republicans (and Democrats) in congress are doing? They are demanding their quid pro quo return on investment for their campaign contribution participation in pay-to-play politics. That's called politics whether the public knows about it or not.
Equal to McConnells hypocrisy and lies is Miller’s assertion that criticism of GOP voter suppression and election rigging laws amounts to a corporate ambush on Democracy. The GOP is ambushing democracy, not corporate critics of the ambush.
The shamelessness is just breathtaking.
How likely that the hypothesis will turn out to be about right is unclear. Probably unlikely. Companies are quietly backing off from the little spate of criticism after the 1/6 coup attempt. They are quietly reopening the campaign contribution taps to Republican authoritarians all over the country. The spasm of corporate social conscience has subsided in view of how incredibly deregulated and profitable it will be to help authoritarian Republican politicians finish ambushing and killing democracy.
Or, is that assessment of corporate morals, or lack thereof, too harsh and unreasonably inaccurate?
Boycott Papa John's!
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