I was off-line for a lot of Sunday so I haven’t been keeping up with the Cheesecake Factory discourse, for which I give thanks to our Lord and God.
(In case you missed it: former President Obama said that President Trump’s additions to the White House “make it look like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” Right-wingers immediately flipped their shit; you would have thought he’d worn a tan suit again.)
I once had a co-worker from rural Georgia. After one trip driving around small Southern towns, I remember lamenting to her that every community seemed to have the same three or four chain restaurants. When I travel, I like to eat like the locals eat. I don’t want Bob Evans or Sonic or Chili’s.
She laughed and said in lot of small Southern towns, all of those “local” places were driven out of business.
I said, “well, then where do you go for a fancy meal, like for your anniversary or a date?”
She said, “in a town like where I grew up, Applebee’s was the ‘fancy’ place.”
So there is something to the idea that for a lot of poorer folks, The Cheesecake Factory is a nice place.
However — and as Paul Harris often says, “there’s always a however in life” — in my experience, Cheesecake Factorys don’t tend to be in poorer or rural towns. They tend to be in upscale shopping malls where bougie white people hang out.
(I’m not sure about the plural of “Cheesecake Factory.” Is it Cheesecake Factories? Cheesecakes Factory?)
Anyway, they are self-consciously over-the-top and decadent, designed to appeal to well-to-do families who either are nouveau-riche enough to think the decor and food are “elegant,” or who are in on the joke, and are laughing at the rococo interiors and elaborate, high-calorie entrees and desserts.
Either way, The Cheesecake Factory’s main audience, in my experience, is not struggling blue-collar families. If it was, they’d be in rural shopping centers, not between an Ann Taylor and a Nordstrom’s at malls with names like “The Village at Deerfield Meadows Crossings.”
For all of Obama’s shortsightedness while he was president, the man is a hell of a rhetorician. He knows how to land a joke. And as the saying goes, “A hit dog will holler.”
The fact that Trump’s handlers immediately melted down over the Cheesecake Factory joke indicates that Obama hit a bull’s eye.
Bill Clinton also had a good line — he said that Trump has made the White House look like “the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.” It was funny, but it was a bit of a dated reference; you’d have to be 50 or older, or extremely hip to mid-century LGBTQ culture, to laugh at a Liberace joke.
But “Cheesecake Factory”? Direct hit, target destroyed.
Anyway, I thought it was liberals who were too sensitive. Obama makes a Cheesecake Factory joke, and suddenly the f–k your feelings crowd needs a safe space.
Hey, MAGA: Go drown your sorrows in a Raspberry Lemon Drop and shut the hell up.