The “Brandon” meme goes corporate…
Pictures, they say, are worth a thousand words. The one above was taken in our hotel room in Charleston while visiting the “City of Churches” to see a concert at the Gaillard Center. It was just after the debate and the Marriott chain’s management team in Charleston’s historic district thought it was a good time to be snide. Who reads their television welcome screen? And even if they did, would they get their little inside joke? No matter how you feel about President Biden’s campaign for reelection, fair-minded observers would agree that his first term was an undeniable success achieved under great duress. The human costs that every president bears while in office are clearly visible in their before and after photos. The job is a bear. For Biden, the headwinds provided by the out-of-power lunatic whose MAGA movement tried at every turn to create in Congress an impediment to governance perhaps never seen before. The reprobate Republican Party has been at this for quite a while. For all these reasons Joe Biden deserves respect.
Marriott International doesn’t have a mission statement, but it does have four stated “core values:”
…putting people first, pursuing excellence, embracing change, acting with integrity and serving our world.
That “acting with integrity” value is in question at least for their property management in Charleston. When contacted, there was a notable progression of replies. First, an email from corporate stating that they apologized for not placing my name on the screen. I responded to them that that wasn’t my concern, and restated the issue. I gave them about 3 days to respond with some sort of recognition that their Charleston team had gone rogue and that this was a serious concern that corporate found disrespectful. Then a second reply from the “front office” of the hotel in question- obviously after they had been told to clean up their mess by corporate:
“I hope this email finds you well,
I was following up your case at our property,
Thank you for taking the time to let us know about your experience while staying with us. In our TV system with provide a warm welcome to our guests (sic) Providing their names, I was checking your reservation (room 428 for be specific) and the person before you the names was Brandon (sic), We as a company, take the beliefs and preferences of our clients extremely seriously, which is why we do not show any inclination towards topics such as politics, sexual preferences or religion. Again, we apologies (sic) for the inconvenient we can be caused to you, and we hope can see you again in our property.
Best regards,
xxxxxxxxxxxx, Front Office Manager” (sick)
The response was disappointing and coming from the Charleston front office left me with no other course than to say I felt the conversations with Marriott were at an end and that my next step would be to let others know. I find it hard to believe the Marriott’s lack of real concern, so I am left with the conclusion that they just didn’t care. The coincidences are too difficult to juggle in one’s mind. They appear to lie just like their idol- often… shamelessly.
This leads to another thought about the seriousness of conservatives as they construct a ruling majority and plan to govern. Is it all a lie? When Ronald Reagan announced that government was itself the cause of our economic ills in his inaugural speech, he lied:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? .
…So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
…Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work — work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
- Regan Inaugural, January 20, 1981
This was the “solution” from a dissolute Republican Party whose most recent leadership brought us the Nixon recession (1973–1975), Gerald Ford’s “stagflation,” and his own “trickle-down economics” failure. The George W. Bush economic policies of tax cuts and a disastrous increase in military funding to cover the costs of two wars helped uncover weaknesses in the economy that brought on the housing bubble that in 2008 led to the “Great Recession.” Reagan’s fatuous words were correct when placed in proper context- Reagan’s and the GOP’s government are both toxic and meanspirited. They help the few at the cost of the many.
After Barack Obama saved their bacon by restoring fiscal order after W’s turn, GOP leadership in the person of Mitch McConnell declared that the purpose of the party in 2010 was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. As Obama’s party was about to get drubbed in the 2010 midterm elections McConnell’s exact words were, “ The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Neither governance nor policy initiatives was more important in an election that followed a dangerous recession that threatened to cause a global depression- a nightmare that was averted by the Obama Administration’s quick action passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 without a single GOP vote in the House.
My final stay at a Marriott property and the response of its corporate masters have left me certain that the Republican Party is the source of most of our current problems. To paraphrase Reagan’s “The nine most horrifying words, ‘ I’m from the GOP and I’m here to help.’”
The cynicism and unpleasantness of their attacks on democracy tell the story of a hollowed-out party bereft that has long since abandoned ideals for power. In the GOP, there is no room for problems that they haven’t the faintest desire to solve. Their problems, it turns out, eventually become ours. At least in my family, Marriott International has a booking problem that begins with a gaping disregard for the intelligence of its guests.
In their own words, ‘YOU’VE EARNED THIS!’
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
