Commentary: Cracker Barrel, Common Sense, and Axios’ Culture War Problem

by Brandon Smith

Axios couldn’t resist. The minute Cracker Barrel listened to its customers and ditched its ill-fated logo redesign, the headlines wrote themselves: “MAGA backlash.” “Trump weighs in.”

That’s the story Axios ran with, and it’s a perfect example of why so many Americans no longer trust outlets like it. Instead of telling the truth, that the new logo flopped and that customers across the political spectrum hated it, Axios jammed the entire episode into a cartoonish culture-war frame.

Here’s what they left out: even the Democratic Party’s official X account mocked the logo. That’s not “MAGA.” That’s not some Trump-led mob.

That’s Americans, left and right, agreeing that a beloved Tennessee company had needlessly messed with tradition.

But Axios doesn’t want you to see that kind of agreement. Unity doesn’t fit their narrative. Division does. And so they spin a story that pits “Trump world” against everyone else, when the truth is much simpler: Cracker Barrel customers, regular hard-working Americans who enjoy a good meal, didn’t like the new look. The company listened, reversed course, and the stock jumped. That’s called business 101.

The irony is that this whole dust-up shows how much Americans do agree on. We like Cracker Barrel the way it is. We like the fact that it feels rooted, familiar, and unpretentious. We like tradition. We like bacon, buttered biscuits, and fried food even though it’s bad for us. You don’t need to be a Republican or a Democrat to feel that way; you just need to be an American consumer.

But when the national media gets ahold of something like this, they can’t help themselves. They paint it as partisan, inject Trump’s name at every turn, and try to squeeze a culture-war headline out of what was really just a customer revolt. It’s lazy. It’s biased. And it’s corrosive.

Axios wants you to believe Americans are hopelessly divided. The truth is, we aren’t. On a lot of things, even something as trivial as a Cracker Barrel logo, there’s more common ground than they’d like to admit. But telling that story doesn’t gin up clicks or fit neatly into their worldview. So they don’t tell it.

Here’s the lesson: America is stronger than our political disagreements. Cracker Barrel got it right. Axios got it wrong. Normal people actually agree on more than the media wants you to think. And that’s the real story worth printing.

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Brandon Smith, a former Chief of Staff to Tennessee’s Attorney General, is a partner at Holtzman Vogel and a conservative voice on law and public policy.
Photo “Laptop User” by Matheus Bertelli and image “Axios Article” is by Axios.

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