this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Do explain
This is at a Buc-ees. This golden beaver is their mascot. Southerners love them some Buc-ees. The reason is that they are awesome for reasons too numerous to mention.
People in the South talk about Buc-ees like New Yorkers talk about fashion pop-ups.
OP is referring to this as the “Golden Calf” of the South. And since as the South is foreign to the leftiest of the leftys, you have the joke.
I drove through TN and skipped the buc-ees. I guess I'll never know
Buc-ees is actually pretty new to TN, it's not a cultural thing.
Still lost, but happy to say the joke is on me if that makes some shithead feel better.
I’ll try:
OP is pointing out the cultural/political divide between the North and South in the US or just how the South is different from a lot of the US. They’re “foreign” to outside eyes.
Southerners treat Buc-ee’s like a religion almost with their obsession. Like some people get cultish about Chick-fil-a.
Ergo the symbol of Buc-ee’s, the beaver, is an idol of that foreign religion (buc-ee’s worship) as viewed from the outside.
The idolatry is a reference to Moses coming down from the mountain when he got the 10 commandments and all that to find people worshipping a golden calf instead of god. The South is very religious…or at least presents that image.
So a bunch of stuff happening in that short OP comment. Got the religious south worshipping a beaver for a store that people outside the south don’t know about or understand the cultish following it has.
It’s a gas station chain in Texas called Buc-ee’s. Some Texans freak out about it in a huge way. I have lots of Buc-ee branded apparel as a result of my brother-in-laws passion, which he’s instilled in my niece who now insists on more shirts for her aunt and uncle.
I’m cool with it as they pay everyone well above minimum wage. If you want to fan out over a corporation, you could do much worse.
You could also do a whole hell of a lot better. The owners are massive Texas GOP donors. Over a million to Abbott alone. I'll go to my local Pakistani-owned Stop 'N Go any day of the week.
Considering the authoritarian way buc-ee’s seems to treat (some?) employees from the sound of some online chatter it meshes nicely with the whole anti-labor, we-own-you, right wing view of employees.
So my assumption of it being the Bass Pro of gas stations was entirely correct?
There are buc-ee’s all over the US now.
https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Buc-ee%27s-USA/
47 locations in 8 states. 34 of them are in Texas.
I think it's fair to describe it as primarily a Texas experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buc-ee%27s