CNN:
Yum! Brands is shuttering all of its KFC franchises in Pakistan in the wake of anti-American protests there, after one of its KFC restaurants was attacked in Lebanon last week, the company said Friday.My old friend Eben Eldridge, a musician and poet who used to live in Seattle but now resides in LA, where he has made something of a name for himself as a voice artist for corporate advertisements:
"Our KFC restaurants in Pakistan are closing as a precautionary measure," said Yum! Brands (YUM, Fortune 500) spokesman Christopher Fuller. "They will continually monitor the situation to decide when to re-open."
(No shame in this game; you got to do what you got to do.) Eldridge has a poem that says something along these lines: During prison riots or revolts, the first, and almost always the only, things a prisoner burns are in his own cell. One can transport the significance of this insight right to the situation in the Arab countries. The destruction of those fast food businesses will have no material (and a very small symbolic) impact on Americans, but will have a huge negative impact on poor and struggling Muslim families. The protestors are caught in the sad trap of burning their own cells.
