AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY DOUG MCINTYRE

The other night, The Wife and I decided to go out for a bite, not that unusual for us, because when we eat out, the dishes are someone else’s problem. Yes, it’s pricey, but so is divorce. Still, deciding where to go is also hazardous to domestic longevity. She likes sushi. I like parmigiana. Negotiations can be intense.

The Wife: “We had Italian the last three times!”

Me: (after a long silence) “Oh.”

Thirty minutes later I was picking splinters from my lips from a pair of cheap chopsticks.

I’ll say this much for sushi: So far, it’s remained the Switzerland of food options, neither left nor right, Republican or Democrat. It might not be edible but at least it’s not partisan.

The same cannot be said for In-N-Out.

The beloved Southern California institution, practically a birthright in the Pacific Time Zone, has suddenly joined the long list of politically incorrect food chains — Chick-Fil-A, Papa John’s, Whole Foods — dragged into the Trump trap. State campaign finance records show Irvine-based In-N-Out donated $25k to the California Republican Party, prompting California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman to tweet: “Et Tu In-N-Out? Tens of thousands of dollars donated to the California Republican Party … it’s time to #BoycottInNOut — let Trump and his cronies support these creeps.”

That’s right, “creeps.”

The party that crows about inclusiveness, tolerance and open-mindedness apparently no longer believes there should even be an opposition party in California.

In January, Business Insider reported managers at In-N-Out average more than $160,000 a year, triple the industry standard with no college degree or previous management experience required. “In-N-Out is just eons above everyone else”, said Saru Jayaraman, a Bay Area advocate for restaurant workers and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley.

In-N-Out starts their workers at higher wages, promotes from within and offers paid vacations, dental and vision coverage plus a 401(k) retirement plan to full-time and part-time employees, something virtually unheard of in the fast-food industry. Glassdoor.com ranked In-N-Out the fourth-best place to work in America, ahead of Google and Microsoft.

Creeps, right?

“In-N-Out has made equal contributions to both Democratic and Republican political action committees”, said In-N-Out Executive Vice President Arnie Wensinger. “Our foundations support our communities by contributing millions of dollars to hundreds of organizations in California to prevent child abuse, human trafficking, and substance addiction.”

And this is the company the chairman of the California Democratic Party has chosen to trash?

Of course, Bauman’s boycott will likely have the opposite effect. Look for a line of MAGA hat-clad Trump supporters doubling down on Double Doubles at In-N-Out, just as Trump haters rallied to the “failing New York Times” and drove up circulation and ad revenues along with sales at Ben & Jerry’s, Keurig and Chobani yogurt, all targets of conservative boycotts.

Americans are constantly being told by cyber-moralists what to watch, what to eat, what to wear and where to shop. PETA is trolling fur-fan Aretha Franklin from beyond the grave while evangelicals tell their congregants not to see movies they themselves have never seen. GrabYourWallet.com posts updated lists of companies considered persona non grata for straying into the Trump camp, while the president himself tries to take down iconic American brands such as the National Football League, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, the Ford Motor Company and even Oreo cookies.

Boycott Oreos? We might as well boycott oxygen.

Economic boycotts are a legitimate tool in the fight for fairness and reform. Martin Luther King’s bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama was one of the pivot points of American history. The divestment of foreign capital from South Africa helped bring an end to apartheid. But boycotts can also be tools for totalitarians to bully people into silence simply because they don’t like what they’ve said. In the age of instant global communication, every grievance can spawn a Change.org petition. That doesn’t make every grievance legitimate.

In-N-Out is a private company operating in a super-competitive environment in a state notoriously hostile to business. The owners of In-N-Out have every right to support the candidates and political party they believe are best for their bottom line. And here’s something shocking — they even have the right to proselytize for their moral beliefs with Bible verses printed on In-N-Out milkshake containers and wrappers. There are no atheists at the In-N-Out drive-through window. That the chairman of the California Democratic Party cannot see how destructive his digital demagoguery is makes him as guilty of trampling the fundamental American right to free expression as the destroyer-in-chief in the White House he so ardently opposes.

It’s the ultimate irony of the information age that censorship has made a roaring comeback from the bad old days of Woodrow Wilson and Joe McCarthy. A recent Economist-YouGov poll reported a chilling 45 percent of Republicans said the government should be able to shut down media outlets for “inaccuracies or bias,” while American colleges and universities, once the citadels of tolerance, have become islands of intolerance. The silencing of differing opinions is an unhappy meal Americans of every political stripe should find hard to swallow.

Doug McIntyre’s column appears Sundays. Hear him weekdays 5-10 on AM 790 KABC. He can be reached at: Doug@KABC.com.