You may not have heard about this yet. But on Friday night, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, president Trump’s press secretary, was asked to leave a restaurant in Lexington Virginia after showing up with seven other guests for a dinner there.
The restaurant in question was called The Red Hen. Not to be confused with the Red Hen restaurant in DC, which is not affiliated and had nothing to do with this incident; hilariously people have been sending angry tweets to the wrong Red Hen twitter account.
The Washington Post, in typical WaPo style, is reporting that the owner of this little restaurant in Lexington, VA literally drove from her home to the restaurant to ask Sarah Sanders to leave. The chef apparently called her (likely in hysterics) and said that Sanders had come with a party of 8, for a dinner reservation under her husband’s name.
So Stephanie Wilkinson, the Red Hen’s owner, got in her car, drove to her restaurant, and ruined Sarah Sanders’ night.
Predictably, the WaPo article about this situation is a total lionization of Wilkinson, painting her as a brave hero standing up to adversity and fighting political polarization by – refusing someone service based on their political beliefs.
Hmm. That’s a far cry from the “tolerance” that the left demands from the right.
And yet the Washington Post is saying that Wilkinson’s shitty little restaurant has “managed to stay in business for 10 years by keeping politics off the menu” in the same paragraph as they praise her for taking a stand against Trump’s “inhumane and unethical” administration. I mean, come on.
Maybe the restaurant has been in business for 10 years because the people of Lexington really love paying $24 for a “Chanterelle & Scape Risotto” made with “Mountain Laurel Chanterelle Mushrooms” and “2 year Aged Pecorino”? (Pecorino cheese, by the way, doesn’t need to be aged any longer than 6 months; leave it sit for two years and it’s liable to become too sandy and salty.)
Maybe it’s stayed in business because, you know, its food is good? (Though, considering they charge $28 dollars for a “Pan Seared Pork Chop,” I doubt it.) But no! According to WaPo, everything is political. Even the decision to stay apolitical.
And everybody who’s mean to Sarah Sanders, from so called “comedian” Michelle Wolfe to so called “resteraunteur” Stephanie Wilkinson, is a big damn hero of American democracy and deserves a hagiographical think-piece glorifying them for “uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
Look, I firmly believe private businesses should have the absolute right to refuse service to anyone if they so choose. But when Jack Phillips gets called a horrible bigot for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple, and Stephanie Wilkinson gets called a hero for refusing to serve a $28 dollar pork chop to Sarah Sanders, there’s a pretty crazy double standard at play.
And the most troubling thing of all is that the left apparently cannot see, or at least completely refuses to acknowledge, that such a standard exists. If a lefty business can refuse to serve a righty and be lauded as heroes by the press, but a righty business can’t refuse to serve a lefty without getting death-threats, something is amiss with the balance of political correctness in this country.
It’s the same action, predicated on more or less the same moral principles. But when one side does it, its heroism, and sticking to your guns, and speaking truth to power.
And when the other side does it, it’s somehow a threat to the very fabric of our democracy.
And yet nobody in the mainstream press will acknowledge how crazy that is.