9.26.13 Glee debuts tonight but no Adam until Ep 4 11.7.13

After regurgitating the same conspiracy theories time and time again via Associated Content, Kerry Kolsch finally got picked up in an online op-ed in The Advocate. They have since amended the article to include mention of Ms. Kolsch’s dubious reputation, but a broader audience has now seen Kolsch’s assertion of Chick-Fil-A masterminding the Kris Allen’s Season 8 American Idol victory over apparent frontrunner Adam Lambert.

Chick-Fil-A’s atrocious uber-Evangelical views towards the LGBT population has dominated much of the news this summer, as President Dan Cathy continuously asserts his derision of gays and lesbians. Mayors Menino and Emmanuel of Boston and Chicago, respectively, have publicly stated they don’t want the growing fast-food chicken empire anywhere in their cities. Chick-Fil-A does not like gay people. We know this to be true. But would they really care so much about Kris Allen winning American Idol just because Adam Lambert is gay? And what merit does Kerry Kolsch’s argument have when you look at ALL OF IT?

MYTH: Chick-Fil-A fed Kris Allen’s hometown voters chicken to spread their anti-gay agenda to the entire nation.
From a marketing standpoint, Chik-Fil-A-sponsored voting parties in Allen’s hometown of Conway, Arkansas (population 60,470) were entirely localized. Their cow costumes and chicken sandwiches were not exactly getting nationwide exposure. Coverage of these parties were broadcast locally, not nationally. Since Chik-Fil-A is a franchise operation, the owner of the Conway store requested permission to sponsor these parties to help a local boy go far on American Idol. He had to get permission to do so. Of course, he could be lying. Perhaps Dan Cathy put a Jesus gun to his head and forced him to hand out free chicken sandwiches because Kris Allen was the only hope to save the U.S. of A. from same sex love and nookie. Dan Cathy likely dreams of being the submissive bottom to Michael Clarke Duncan’s Green Mile character, and then prays for forgiveness upon waking, but lets be realistic. Although Chick-Fil-A is headquartered in Arkansas and American Idol was still a very popular show in 2009, the okay handed down to the Conway Chick-Fil-A operator was likely at the behest of the company’s marketing & PR department, never needing Cathy’s Christ-soaked approval.

MYTH: Kris Allen likes Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and is by all accounts a “good Christian boy” so therefore, he must hate gay people.
Kris Allen has Tweeted about his enjoyment of the occasional Chick-Fil-A sandwich following his American Idol victory. Maybe he was thanking the support of Chick-Fil-A in his hometown. Was he getting paid to shill for them? Probably not. But even if he was, does this mean he hates gay people? Just because he’s a Christian? If he found homosexuality to be a sin, then why the hell was he SLEEPING IN THE SAME ROOM AS ADAM LAMBERT for the entirety of Season 8. Does this sound like the behavior of a homophobic Jesus freak to you? The last thing a homophobic Jesus freak would do is SLEEP IN THE SAME ROOM as a gay man. And while Allen is a church goer and has been on several missionary trips around the world, this probably means he believes in God and Christ and wanted to go to countries and see things and meet people outside of where he grew up.

Danny Gokey was the avowed Jesus follower of Season 9 and he wasn’t quiet about it. Kris Allen never mentioned religion once on the show. And even if American Idol is considered “reality television,” any one should know by now that reality TV needs archetypes to build stories around. Kris Allen was painted to be the sweet “guy next door” with acoustically-expressed feelings, while Adam Lambert was the bad boy (OMG Tattoos! He dyes his hair and wears black!) in “guyliner.” Over three years later, Kris Allen is just trying to make the music he wants to make and play shows with his buddies. Danny Gokey is still yapping about God.

MYTH: Kerry Kolsch must be right because Chick-Fil-A hates gay people.
Kerry Kolsch has been on a single-minded mission to prove to the world that an elaborate anti-gay conspiracy “stole” the American Idol title from Adam Lambert for over three years. Three years. In this time, both Lambert and Allen have released follow-up albums. Lambert’s sophomore effort was the top-selling album in its first week of release, making him the first openly gay pop star to claim the top spot on the Billboard charts. Allen may sell fewer albums, but seems to have having a good time playing shows around the country.

Perhaps Ms. Kolsch’s endless regurgitation of allegations she’s been spewing since 2009 may appear somewhat coherent as public disdain for Chik-Fil-A grows, but one really needs to look at the ENTIRETY of her argument, one which she self-published an ENTIRE tome on.

Chick-Fil-A, together with AT&T and the Governor of Arkansas, conspired to steal the American Idol title from Adam Lambert. The entire Allen family, mainly “torturous singer” Kris and his brother, were also in on the conspiracy.

That’s pretty much the crux of it, but if you ever buy Adam Lambert: Second To None, feel free to also read the entire chapter on Lambert “Moving The Quantum.” Ms. Kolsch never really even addresses the fact that people in small towns in mid- and southern American rally around contestants on American Idol much more than do contestants from the suburbs of San Diego and Los Angeles.

In every season since David Cook’s victory in 2008, the winner has continued to be a white guy with guitar. The ubiquitous WGWG is now even acknowledged by the show’s creators. Much of Ms. Kolsch’s original argument loses steam just through the passage of time, but also the fact that the show has produced a particular type of winner every season since Kris Allen allegedly “stole” the title from judges’ favorite Adam Lambert because Adam Lambert likes peen.

Kerry Kolsch is my all-time favorite lunatic Idol fan. Never has anyone given me so much joy and pleasure through sheer absurdity. Her alleged biography is fantastic–she’s an attorney, she’s a lesbian, she’s a salt-dough artist, she’s an anti-vaccination Ron Paul fanatic, she’s a goat farmer, hell, she’s even an expert in “poison-dart frogs.” Her entire (alleged) family is full of colorful characters, including a disbarred attorney mother and a cousin named Ash Ruiz, who was a late-era member of Menudo and now a New Age solo artist of sorts in the Bay Area who received a modicum of attention this past spring with a press release “addressing the Burning Man crisis” and subsequent song & video. So much information on her and yet so little is out there. And such a prolific writer! Part of me wants to believe she’s a performance art piece masterminded by James Franco and a troupe of sycophants. And while Kerry Kolsch hates everything about American Idol ever since Kris Allen won, she publicly (Publicly = Associated Content drivel) supported eventual winner Scotty McCreery throughout Season 10–something which makes no sense given McCreery’s small-town Southern boy aw shucks apple pie pedigree almost makes Kris Allen look as if maybe just once, he did have sex with a back alley prostitute after smoking PCP.

As far as Chick-Fil-A goes, I’ve never eaten at one. Not that you should care, but I’m still going to tell you why I’ve never tried their chicken [which really cannot be as good as people purport it to be]. It’s fast food chicken for christ’s sake. (See what I did there?) In any case, like a lot of 16-year-olds back in 1993, I worked in a mall. And there was a Chick-Fil-A in this mall which I never visited beyond walking past it, but I knew a guy from the baseball team in my honor’s physics class worked there because I would see him when I went to work or was at the mall. I wasn’t really friends with him, there was no reason for me to go to a Chick-Fil-A and plus, being a lifelong skeptic of organized religion and very much against any sort of doctrine that wanted to control what I did as a female and what I could do with my body, I refused to give money to a place closed on Sundays with a sign outside of the store proclaiming this to be so because it was a day of the lord and one should spend it with their families.

No, I’m not anti-family or anti-day off. But Jesus Christ has nothing to do with fast food chicken. And promoting this weekly closure as such just left a bad taste in my mouth. Here was a company that was for all the things I was vehemently against, even if I was only 16. It just seemed wrong.

Fact of the matter, Chick-Fil-A has always been a shitty company operating from an Evangelical slant. Not everyone that works for the company agrees with their line of bullshit, but yes, the executive position is that yes, Christ is good. Perhaps people should be examining whether or not they regularly employ discrimination while hiring. Technically, they’ve been advertising their Christianity via in-store marketing every time they close on Sunday–at least they were back in 1993. And frankly, if a place is promoting these sorts of tenets, its a pretty safe assumption they’re not down with homosexuality and a bunch of other things that are generally awesome.

I will never eat at a Chick-Fil-A. In an ideal future, Chick-Fil-A will go under not only because the overwhelming majority in this country realize that sexual orientation is not a choice–a “trend” growing more than any chain of fried chicken sandwich stores–but because corporations publicly parading their religious beliefs is just tacky and offensive. We can’t control what individuals believe in, or what causes they donate to, but religion has no place in deciding what’s best for an entire population–or even an entire customer base. For now, we can only combat this while choosing not to give our business to places that offend our beliefs and sensibilities.

If you really do like Chick-Fil-A and can’t resist hitting one up occasionally on any Monday-Saturday, yet abhor their anti-gay agenda, the only thing I can tell you is to absolve your Chick-Fil-A guilt via confessional.

Chick-Fil-A DOES suck, however, this doesn’t make Kerry Kolsch a reputable source on the matter. While it is tempting to want to find a million and one horrible things Chick-Fil-A has done to hurt the LGBT community (funding Prop 8, et al), we can’t just cling to any sort of nutter’s tenuous claims of conspiracy involving a televised talent competition. And while The Advocate had the best intentions, and rightfully edited to show proof the source has a history of slander (towards one AT&T employee constantly mentioned in Ms. Kolsch’s tirade as being one of the masterminds of the conspiracy) and beating dead horses, an op-ed published on Yahoo! (via what was previously Associated Content) should be more closely examined. Anyone can publish anything online, and while there are a lot of talented writers with honest intentions out there, open-source “news sites” should be approached with a grain of salt and maybe a few Google searches.

(Side note: In-N-Out Burger, that stuff gays and straights and even beastophiles salivate over and Instagram photos of all the fucking time like its nectar from cow heaven, they include bible citations on their packaging. Just something to consider the next time you’re in California.)

And $10 says Ash Ruiz ends up going to Burning Man this year. I so wish he would bring Cousin Kerry. But then who would tend to the goats, the salt-dough, and the biggest fast food hate crime of all time?