The real problem with Cracker Barrel is not wokery but corporate mediocrity

'Blandification' is claiming casualties across sectors, from eateries to cars and movies.

- Adrian Wooldridge

The latest battle in America's woke wars featured a country-themed restaurant-and-store which gloried in the name of Cracker Barrel. The senior management of Cracker Barrel Old Country Store tried to modernize their enterprise by simplifying its logo and removing the image of an overall-clad man leaning on a barrel. Maga spotted a plot by woke managers to destroy another corner of Old America.

Battle ensued.

"WTF is wrong with @CrackerBarrel??!", roared Mr Donald Trump Jr. on social media platform X.

"Cracker Barrel must be broken," urged conservative activist Christopher Rufo.

The company's stock lost almost US$100 million (S$128 million). US President Donald Trump himself took time off from undermining the independence of the Federal Reserve to urge the company to go back to its old logo. And the company duly obliged and restored the overall-clad man to his rightful place.

Maga is now celebrating yet another victory over the woke revolution: Conservative intellectuals who have never eaten at Cracker Barrel can now visit one to toast their triumph with a glass of Wild Berry Tea.

But the victory is not only ridiculous but Pyrrhic. Ridiculous because the people behind the redesign were not woke revolutionaries but paint-by-numbers managers.

Pyrrhic because the corporate homogenization of American culture will continue. Cracker Barrel's retention of its "Old Timer" will not change the numbing monotony of America's increasingly generic and boring popular eateries. The real threat to America is not wokery. It is mediocrity.

We like to think of "mediocrity" as a mistake: Management's job is to pursue excellence and to weed out mediocrity. Yet today's corporate landscape suggests a darker reality: Mediocrity is not so much a feature as a bug.