Friends In Low Places

 I admit I wasn't looking to name Target as a hero of the revolution. Nor did I imagine that the company that was engulfing and devouring other entertainment entities like a blue whale at a krill buffet would be a shining light in the battle for conscience. Disney as savior? What about Bud becoming the light and the way? Culture wars make strange bedfellows, I suppose. 

Like this guy Garth Brooks. If you've lived a Garth-free life, you might not be familiar with the best selling artist of all time. Depending on whose web site you believe. Garth sang about red necks and cowboys and trains. He sold a lot of records. But you probably wouldn't have imagined him as a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ community. 

Until now. Garth Brooks, multi-platinum country superstar is opening a new bar, and he says that he'll be serving "all beers." This statement caused quite a stir among the point-headed crowd who get upset when bar owners decide to sell different brands of beer. Especially if that beer is on the boycotted list of that same pointy-headed group. Rather than make a grand show of not selling one of the most popular beers on the planet, Mister Brooks has made the choice to be inclusive. He said he hopes his Friends In Low Places Bar & Honky Tonk, which is set to open in the South Broadway District of Nashville, would be "the Chick-fil-A of honky-tonks." Which certainly has its own spin these days since the pointy-head crowd had to find a new place to get their fried chicken sandwiches once Chick-fil-A hired a diversity and and equity executive. 

"I want it to be a place you feel safe in, I want it to be a place where you feel like there are manners and people like one another," Brooks said. "And yes, we're going to serve every brand of beer. We just are. It's not our decision to make. Our thing is this: if you [are let] into this house, love one another."

Which kind of brings us back to the root question: Are you really a hero of the cause if your base motive is capitalism? I suppose it beats the heck out of putting up walls and shooting beer cans with machine guns. Maybe folks will line up to buy Bud Light from Garth Brooks to go out into the parking lot to shoot at it. Everybody wins.