Are people like WholeFoods founder and CEO John Mackey really that rare? Many in the media seem to think so. Ever since Mackey published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this summer, the press have been treating him as an anomaly.
Nick Paumgarten has a piece in The New Yorker about Mackey’s quirks, but the real issue seems to be more about the fact that Paumgarten — like so many others — doesn’t like to surrender his stereotypes.
The right-wing hippie is a rare bird, and it’s fair to say that most of Whole Foods’ shoppers have trouble conceiving of it.
But maybe it’s not quite as rare as Paumgarten thinks: Rod Dreher wrote about the morally conservative — particularly the orthodox Christian — “hippie” in his 2002 book Crunchy Cons. Since its publication, the movement has grown to encompass both conservative and libertarian “hippies.”
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