By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--June 27, 2018
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Smart people understand that politics is politics and business is business. Smart people also understand that the party thing isn’t personal. You can disagree with someone but you don’t treat them badly or harass them in public because of said disagreements.
Stephanie Wilkinson is not a smart person. She’s a dumb person. She thought the presence of a Trump Administration official in her restaurant required her to take a grandiose moral stand. Wilkinson showed no class, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed all class, politely agreeing to leave and even offering to pay for a meal she wasn’t allowed to eat.The Red Hen restaurant in Washington, D.C., which sits in an upscale neighborhood of the nation’s capital, attempted to clarify it had no connection to the controversy involving Sanders, tweeting Saturday that she had gone to an unaffiliated Red Hen, “not to our DC-based restaurant.” More than 4,300 replied, including multiple tweets calling on the restaurant to condone Sanders and the Trump administration’s actions. The Red Hen answered the threats by defining “unaffiliated” as well as an explanation that it is illegal for businesses in the District of Columbia to discriminate against people because of their political views. On Yelp, the backlash included one-star reviews and death threats. Conversely, one user asked if the restaurant was connected to the one that declined to serve Sanders, saying if so, they’d “stop by.”
Beyond social media, the restaurant was also egged. Another Red Hen restaurant, this one in Swedesboro, New Jersey, also faced a slew of angry calls and social media posts for refusing to serve a woman who’d never stepped through their door. “Kindly check your facts before you erroneously defame an innocent victim on Facebook,” said a post on the family-owned restaurant’s Facebook page.This is all on Stephanie Wilkinson. The owners of those other Red Hen restaurants should sue her for such a stupid act that is now tarnishing their reputations, when they actually understand how customer service works and would never do such a moronic thing. And it’s all because she forgot, or never knew, that you don’t mix business with politics. And you certainly don’t refuse to serve someone because of who they are. Now I can hear some of you firing up your keyboards to call me a “hypocrite” because I defended Jack Phillips’s right not to bake a gay wedding cake. You’re going to tell me it’s the same thing.
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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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