The New York Times has an interesting article on the “Price Courage” of huge corporate poultry processors – they had the gizzards and guts and gumption to band with their fellow middle men to refuse wage increases to their workers and unilaterally raise the price of chickens. And of course, this being ‘Merica, they got away with it.
Lawyers for the executives, all of whom pleaded not guilty, argued that their clients never broke the law. “Chicken nirvana has nothing to do with the conspiracy,” John Fagg, a defense lawyer for Bill Lovette, a former Pilgrim’s Pride chief executive, said. “It’s two employees of Pilgrim’s Pride emailing with one another.” He proposed an alternative explanation for the major price increase in 2014: “price courage.”
New York Times
It all starts with a KFC ad from the ’60s, where a middle-management doofus receives an anonymous phone call, scolding him about how hard his wife works, and how he can correct all that’s wrong in his life (and by extension, society) by bringing home dinner. Colonel Sanders plays the role of the savior archetype.
In a spot from that era [the ’60s], a man in an office answers a phone call from an anonymous male narrator who asks, “Sir, do you have any idea what your wife has to do to run your house?” Cut to a sped-up montage of an impeccably dressed 30-something as she dusts, irons, vacuums and balances the checkbook. Newly enlightened, the husband shows his appreciation by stopping at Kentucky Fried Chicken on his way home. Cut to a close-up of a happy wife biting into a drumstick.
New York Times
