Wonder how many guys wanna marry her now?
09-24-2004, 08:18 AM
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Originally Posted by bodhi
http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/sanders.asp
Claim: Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame left a will specifying that 10% of KFC's profits be given to the Ku Klux Klan.
Status: False.
Origins: One of the curiosities of urban legendry is that nearly every founder of a fast food chain who is publicly identifiable by virtue of having appeared in his company's advertisements has become the subject of rumors associating him (and his company) with the most unsavory groups society has to offer: satan worshippers and the KKK. These rumors have dogged, at one time or another, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Carl Karcher of Carl's Jr., Dave Thomas of Wendy's, and Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Why this class of legend has been linked to the fast food industry for so many years now is something we haven't yet fathomed; fast food founders don't seem to be, as a group, of any particular religious, geographic, or political affiliation. This specific version of the rumor at least makes a little superficial sense in that Kentucky Fried Chicken's founder, Harlan Sanders, was the epitome of the popular image of a Southern gentleman — a distinguished, elderly man with white hair, moustache, and goatee who wore white suits and black ties, posed with a cane, and affected the title of "Colonel" — and his name and image have always been very strongly identified with both his company and its product. Of course, the automatic association of anything "Southern" with the Ku Klux Klan is an insultingly simple one, but urban legends are generally based upon form, not logic.
Whatever the underlying sociological reason for this rumor, it simply couldn't be true as stated. Harlan Sanders' will could not have directed 10% of KFC's profits to the KKK unless Sanders had controlling interest in the company, and he didn't. Sanders died in 1980, sixteen years after he sold his entire interest in Kentucky Fried Chicken to a group of investors for $2 million. (He continued to serve as KFC's spokesperson and appear in their advertising for many years after the sale, however, which undoubtedly led many people to falsely believe he still owned the company up until the day he died.) Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan is not a single, centrally-administered organization; it is the collective term for a number of separate (sometimes competing) groups in various states who all identify themselves as being part of "the Klan." Yes, Sanders might have died with a pre-1964 will in effect, he might have left money to "the KKK" whether or not that term was a legally specific one, or he might have bequeathed some fixed amount of money (not a share of the company's profits) to a designated Klan group, but nothing more substantial than rumor supports any of these possibilities.
We're often asked how rumors of this type affect businesses, and it's a question we can't really answer with anything more than a few general assumptions. (Surely it's bad for business, we assume, but we have no objective way of measuring that.) In this case, however, I can cite a specific example from personal experience.
As mentioned above, the KKK association rumor was also attached to Carl Karcher, the founder and former head of Carl's Jr. (a hamburger chain based in California with outlets throughout the western United States). Depending upon which version of the legend you heard, Karcher donated money to the KKK, was a member of the KKK, or even served as the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK. In 1992, I was taking an evening class at the local branch of the California State University system. At the time, the school's administrators were drafting plans to expand the student union facilities on campus, and their plans included granting space for the operation of a fast food franchise. Carl's Jr. was the franchise of choice — until the student body got wind of the "fact" that Carl Karcher had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Protests based on this spurious rumor forced the issue of which fast food franchise to allow on campus to be put before a vote of the entire student body during the upcoming student council elections. One evening at the beginning of class, another student in the same course who was running for a student council position got up before the class to make a short "vote for me" speech. She prefaced her remarks by announcing (without qualification) that the head of Carl's Jr. gave money to the KKK, and we should all be sure to vote against having a Carl's Jr. franchise on campus because "we don't want to support people like that."
Claim: Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame left a will specifying that 10% of KFC's profits be given to the Ku Klux Klan.
Status: False.
Origins: One of the curiosities of urban legendry is that nearly every founder of a fast food chain who is publicly identifiable by virtue of having appeared in his company's advertisements has become the subject of rumors associating him (and his company) with the most unsavory groups society has to offer: satan worshippers and the KKK. These rumors have dogged, at one time or another, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Carl Karcher of Carl's Jr., Dave Thomas of Wendy's, and Harlan Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Why this class of legend has been linked to the fast food industry for so many years now is something we haven't yet fathomed; fast food founders don't seem to be, as a group, of any particular religious, geographic, or political affiliation. This specific version of the rumor at least makes a little superficial sense in that Kentucky Fried Chicken's founder, Harlan Sanders, was the epitome of the popular image of a Southern gentleman — a distinguished, elderly man with white hair, moustache, and goatee who wore white suits and black ties, posed with a cane, and affected the title of "Colonel" — and his name and image have always been very strongly identified with both his company and its product. Of course, the automatic association of anything "Southern" with the Ku Klux Klan is an insultingly simple one, but urban legends are generally based upon form, not logic.
Whatever the underlying sociological reason for this rumor, it simply couldn't be true as stated. Harlan Sanders' will could not have directed 10% of KFC's profits to the KKK unless Sanders had controlling interest in the company, and he didn't. Sanders died in 1980, sixteen years after he sold his entire interest in Kentucky Fried Chicken to a group of investors for $2 million. (He continued to serve as KFC's spokesperson and appear in their advertising for many years after the sale, however, which undoubtedly led many people to falsely believe he still owned the company up until the day he died.) Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan is not a single, centrally-administered organization; it is the collective term for a number of separate (sometimes competing) groups in various states who all identify themselves as being part of "the Klan." Yes, Sanders might have died with a pre-1964 will in effect, he might have left money to "the KKK" whether or not that term was a legally specific one, or he might have bequeathed some fixed amount of money (not a share of the company's profits) to a designated Klan group, but nothing more substantial than rumor supports any of these possibilities.
We're often asked how rumors of this type affect businesses, and it's a question we can't really answer with anything more than a few general assumptions. (Surely it's bad for business, we assume, but we have no objective way of measuring that.) In this case, however, I can cite a specific example from personal experience.
As mentioned above, the KKK association rumor was also attached to Carl Karcher, the founder and former head of Carl's Jr. (a hamburger chain based in California with outlets throughout the western United States). Depending upon which version of the legend you heard, Karcher donated money to the KKK, was a member of the KKK, or even served as the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK. In 1992, I was taking an evening class at the local branch of the California State University system. At the time, the school's administrators were drafting plans to expand the student union facilities on campus, and their plans included granting space for the operation of a fast food franchise. Carl's Jr. was the franchise of choice — until the student body got wind of the "fact" that Carl Karcher had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. Protests based on this spurious rumor forced the issue of which fast food franchise to allow on campus to be put before a vote of the entire student body during the upcoming student council elections. One evening at the beginning of class, another student in the same course who was running for a student council position got up before the class to make a short "vote for me" speech. She prefaced her remarks by announcing (without qualification) that the head of Carl's Jr. gave money to the KKK, and we should all be sure to vote against having a Carl's Jr. franchise on campus because "we don't want to support people like that."
