It’s quite possible that I love Cracker Barrel more than any other opinion columnist in America.

I took my first date to Cracker Barrel when I was 16 years old. My family used to eat at Cracker Barrel every New Year’s Day to set our New Year’s resolutions, and when we debated where to eat on Sundays after church, I was the one putting my thumb on the scale for Cracker Barrel’s country-fried steak and mashed potatoes.

Despite all that history — all those hours eating Southern comfort food in a regional chain restaurant designed to look like an old general store — I absolutely do not care what its logo looks like.

Once again, I find myself out of step with much of the modern right.

If you follow right-wing media at all, you know that two of the biggest stories of the last month involve completely frivolous and meaningless cultural disputes. First, at the end of July, a few voices online criticized an ad campaign by American Eagle that featured Sydney Sweeney, an actress and model.

And second, Cracker Barrel had the audacity to change its logo, replacing the older version that featured a man (Uncle Herschel, in Cracker Barrel lore) leaning against a barrel with a new logo that simply featured the words “Cracker Barrel” in a plain font.

Neither of these incidents has the slightest material impact on any person’s life (except perhaps Sydney Sweeney’s), yet stories about an ad and a logo in some cases dwarfed the right-wing coverage given to various Trump scandals. And that just might be the point: to distract.

At the same time, they also perfectly represent the way in which right-wing media both mobilizes its base and bends political reality.