Cracker Barrel and Sunday at Nine

Fun at the Cracker Barrel

Along the major Interstate highways in the United States, the ones primarily leading into the Southern States, one cannot avoid coming across the Cracker Barrel chain of restaurants.  They are very American, serving wholesome food with a rural Southern accent, and always have a gift shop attached featuring all sorts of stuff, much of which, like the for-sale rocking chairs lining their porches, is in the rural American style. 

On each table you’ll find a wooden pegboard game, using golf tees with which to amuse yourself while waiting to be served.  It’s a fun game and many, like myself, have purchased one at the cash register, and have mastered it, and impress any guests with whom I might find myself at a Cracker Barrel.  Their food really isn’t bad.

The object of the game is to remove the pegs from the board by jumping over them until only one peg remains. To an unpracticed novice, that’s difficult.  But what I want to point out is the inscription burnt into the wood on both sides of the game’s base.  It appears as follows: 

 

                                                          

                                                             ”JUMP ALL BUT ONE GAMES”

                                                        JUMP EACH TEE AND REMOVE IT

                                                     LEAVE ONLY ONE – YOU’RE GENIUS

                                                   LEAVE TWO AND YOU’RE PURTY SMART

                                              LEAVE THREE AND YOU’RE JUST PLAIN DUMB

                                                  LEAVE FOUR OR MOR’N YOU’RE JUST PLAIN

                                                                   “EG-NO-RA-MOOSE”

                                          CRACKER BARREL                       OLD COUNTRY STORE

What I am getting at is the intentional use of misspellings and bad grammar in this game.  Everything in a Cracker Barrel is associated with “Americana.”  In putting this game on every table, the message is that it’s okay, in fact it’s very “American” to be ignorant, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.   And that is why most of the States with a profusion of Cracker Barrels cast their electoral votes for Donald Trump in 2016 and will again in 2020.  The same ignorance and gullibility required to support Trumpublican candidates, including the President, is pandered to by the pegboard games in the Cracker Barrels.

Of course, I’m not saying that Cracker Barrel’s game consciously has a political motive.  What I am saying is that Cracker Barrel knows what pleases its customers along the Interstates in places like Georgia, North Carolina and Missouri.  And of course, Donald Trump does too.

Jack Lippman

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Mueller Report

Sunday Night at 9:00 p.m., Eastern time, be sure to watch MSNBC to find out what is in the Mueller Report.  It really is too massive a document for most to digest, but MSNBC will give it a try!   All Americans should watch it.  Sunday, July 21 at Nine.

Read What We Wrote

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