One teenager’s choice to bake a cookie cake with the Confederate flag set off a small Twitter backlash Wednesday, tapping into a deeper vein of discontent among many conservatives that even had one congressman tie the issue to the national same-sex marriage debate in a way he said he hoped would make “liberals’ heads explode.”
A teenage worker at a Nestle Toll House Cafe in a Columbia, South Carolina mall displayed a giant cookie cake with the Confederate flag placed in the center and “Heritage! Not Hate!” surrounding it. The cake was displayed at a mall where confessed Charleston-church shooter Dylann Roof was arrested twice this year.
The manager of the store quickly took it down and apologized for its display, on the same day that state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine shooting victims, was memorialized just a few miles away.
But the removal of the cake spurred a small backlash among some conservatives online. For some, the flag fight reminded them of the recent legal battle that embroiled a Colorado bakery after it refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple.
Conservative commentator and CNN contributor Ben Ferguson followed up with a rhetorical question about a large Confederate flag cake.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, wedded the flag debate and same-sex marriage together in a tweet Wednesday morning.
Republican leaders have largely coalesced around calls to remove the Confederate flag from state capitols and other official property. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley ordered four flags around a memorial taken down Wednesday and South Carolina lawmakers are looking at how to take down the flag from a Confederate war memorial that’s on state property.
But a small backlash has grown online, where critics worry that the moves are infringing on free speech and amount to political correctness run amok.
Conservative radio personality Tammy Bruce complained after Warner Bros. announced this week that Dukes of Hazzard items would no longer feature the Confederate flag.
Amazon, Walmart and other businesses announced this week they would stop selling items featuring the flag and other Confederate symbols.