SALENA ZITO: The covenant between the Main Street consumer and big corporations is collapsing.

There is only one business here on Penn Avenue that is a franchise establishment. It is called Penzeys Spices. On this Wednesday afternoon, there is a sign on the front door reading it is closed despite it being early afternoon. A call to the store the next day reveals it hasn’t had in-customer service “in forever,” and when it does, it is inconsistent, but the store would be happy to take a phone order or direct me to its website.

The word that traveled so fast around here was about Penzeys — on several fronts.

First, customers were tired of not being able to go into the store. When you want to buy a spice, aroma is a big part of that experience and decision. You could see workers in the store, but you could not physically go inside. This was a starkly different experience than customers had at every mom and pop store, not just on either side of Penzeys, but up and down the street.. . .

There was a second reason word was spreading about Penzeys, though.

Usually, when we buy our food to make a meal, whether it is at a grocery store or a local farm or farmers market, we don’t expect to be lectured about politics. We are all adults, and we all have a level of expectation that store owners’ politics may be different than ours. What we don’t expect is to be scolded for holding different beliefs.

And we certainly don’t expect to be called racists.

Yet that is exactly what Bill Penzey Jr. did in emails to his customers twice over the past month, and it wasn’t even subliminal. Penzey sent out a corporate email and posted on his webpage the ” Republicans are Racists” weekend special the store held for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

That was followed just days later by another “All Republicans are Racists” special that begged whatever remaining loyal customers it had — he admitted in his Facebook post that the store had lost 40,000 of them — to buy gift cards.

There are several things at play here that deserve deeper exploration. These things really show a lot about the dwindling relationship that consumers have with the men and women who run many of the institutions, corporations, and media and entertainment outlets in this country.

It is a covenant that has broken because people like Penzey don’t have a cultural connection to their customers. This is not a Democratic or Republican thing. It’s an inside-outside thing. Here in Western Pennsylvania, you don’t have to be a Republican to have been really turned off by his missive.

That’s because he was being a dick. But in our monocultured Gentry Class, people say things like this and don’t even understand how they play with the normal-American community.