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Boycott ‘curse’ in NYC backfires

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, arrives to speak Friday at the Jamaica Muslim Center, where he welcomed a dozen Syrian refugees bound for Texas to New York City.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, left, arrives to speak Friday at the Jamaica Muslim Center, where he welcomed a dozen Syrian refugees bound for Texas to New York City. Bryan R. Smith Associated Press

Unintended consequences ...

New York’s Mayor de Blasio’s recently called boycott of a Chick-fil-A restaurant resulted in an increase of business for the restaurant chain. If he were familiar with biblical history, he would have known it wouldn’t work. In Numbers 22:6 King Balak sent for the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God made Balaam bless them instead. King Balak’s request was, “Therefore please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.”

Although many people I have known from New York were great friends and brilliant individuals, apparently de Blasio and those who elected him fall within the class of people to whom the English humorist Douglas Adams referred when he wrote, “The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.”

D. Merrill Adams

Palmetto

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 8:50 AM with the headline "Boycott ‘curse’ in NYC backfires."

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