He said the staff is a little concerned
The Post has details on what went down at The Little Red Hen. Nothing lurid, just what people were thinking and how it played out.
The owner was at home yesterday evening when the chef called to tell her Sanders was there.
“He said the staff is a little concerned. What should we do?” [Stephanie] Wilkinson told The Washington Post. “I said I’d be down to see if it’s true.”
It seemed unlikely to her that President Trump’s press secretary should be dining at a 26-seat restaurant in rural Virginia. But then, it was unlikely that her entire staff would have misidentified Sanders, who had arrived last to a table of eight booked under her husband’s name.
As she made the short drive to the Red Hen, Wilkinson knew only this:
She knew Lexington, population 7,000, had voted overwhelmingly against Trump in a county that voted overwhelmingly for him. She knew the community was deeply divided over such issues as Confederate flags. She knew, she said, that her restaurant and its half-dozen servers and cooks had managed to stay in business for 10 years by keeping politics off the menu.
And she knew — she believed — that Sarah Huckabee Sanders worked in the service of an “inhumane and unethical” administration. That she publicly defended the president’s cruelest policies, and that that could not stand.
She doesn’t love confrontation, and she doesn’t love putting a big target on her restaurant but
“This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
This is after a week in which Sanders has been defending Trump’s loathsome actions on immigration and the abduction of immigrants’ children.
When she got there she found that it was no mistake, there was the press secretary.
Several Red Hen employees were gay, she said. They knew Sanders had defended Trump’s desire to bar transgender people from the military. This month, they had all watched her evade questions and defend a Trump policy that caused migrant children to be separated from their parents.
“Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave,” Wilkinson told her staff, she said. “They said yes.”
So, without any joy, she did.
“I said, ‘I’m the owner,’ ” she recalled, ” ‘I’d like you to come out to the patio with me for a word.’ ”
They stepped outside, into another small enclosure, but at least out of the crowded restaurant.
“I was babbling a little, but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion,” Wilkinson said. “I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.
“I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.’ ”
Sanders said that’s fine, and the others in the party went with her. They offered to pay for the cheese plate and drinks they’d already had but Wilkinson said no, it’s on the house. (Sanders didn’t mention that in her official press secretary tweet.)
The restaurant is closed for this evening; Wilkinson doesn’t know if this will destroy her business or not.
Given the demographics of the area, the business will probably be fine.
I’d have more respect for Sanders if she didn’t yield immediately with “that’s fine” and then later take to twitter. She could have argued she was entitled to be served, could have said threatened to tweet about it, etc. But, nope, just left.
I mean obviously you know she’s mad, so that’s not a surprise. Just seems odd that the person always yelling at the press wouldn’t stand up for herself here, then tries to put them out of business via twitter.
Yes, who knows. Maybe she wanted to avoid a fuss…maybe she didn’t know what to do in the moment…lots of possibilities. But then using her powerful job to get revenge – that’s simply disgusting.
I’d eat there. But it’s almost 4000 km from here … ~36 hour drive …~ $1000 airfare to Richmond…
I’ll have to stick to internet encouragement.
Skeletor
If a restauranteur asked you to leave and you chose to stay, how much spittle, dandruff, mucus, etc. would you be willing to consume to maintain the moral high ground?
Sanders did the smart thing.
I’ve been through there a couple of times. Pretty town, with several appealing restaurants and a great ice cream shop. I’ll have to make a point of visiting Red Hen the next time I’m in the area.
Interesting that a restauranteur who should technically be serving her has the guts to risk her livelihood and firmly tell Sanders to her face things that much of the press corps she lies to every day does not.
All of it!
I apparently didn’t state my point clearly. I wouldn’t eat there, and I wouldn’t expect Sanders to. My point is that I’d expect most people to either tell them they had no right to do that and that there would be consequences, or, if they act like they’re going to just drop it, then drop it. It’s the combination of Sanders acting like she was going to drop the matter and then later trying to crater her business with a tweet that I don’t respect.
But, hey, easy for me to say from behind my keyboard.
It’ll be interesting to see if this leads to further consequences. I could see this becoming a thing for businesses to do — prove your liberal/patriotic bona rides by refusing to serve Trumpkins.
Stephanie Wilkinson could do a lot worse than change the name of her restaurant from The Little Red Hen to The US Constitution, or to The Bill of Rights, since she is apparently better at maintaining and defending both than is Trump or any of his staffers.
Why would it destroy her business? Lots of people on the left will agree with her actions, and people on the right have been very vocal recently on the point of business owners being able to refuse service to anyone they want – even protected classes of people – if they feel strongly enough about it. I mean, who in the world could possibly not respect Wilkinson’s freedom of choice to take this action? /s
Karellen;
There are rumblings of Trump Trolls flooding Yelp with nasty ‘reviews’ already. We’ll see how long it takes for gun-toting crazies to show up looking for pedophile lizards in the basement.
Karellen, that was the thought that went through my head, too. The problem with Trump supporters is that they believe that only applies to Real Americans™ and Democrats, Hillary voters, non-white people, and women (except those that vote Republican) are not Real Americans™. They must be hung out to dry if they deny service to Real Americans™.
So I have a slightly different perspective on the situation after reading this take by religious conservative Rod Dreher (who is really out there in a lot of ways but often interesting):
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sarah-sanders-little-red-hen/
First, the sequence of events hadn’t been clear to me. One of the staff had made a gloaty Facebook post about how they had kicked Sanders out, complete with the shot of a whiteboard showing she’d been “86’d”. I had seen that but for some reason had thought that had been posted after Sanders’ tweet.
Shortly after that, screenshots of the Facebook post hit Twitter, which blew up. So this was already out there when Sanders responded more than 8 hours after it had been Facebooked and tweeted.
I still think her tweet was self-righteous and petty, but now that it’s clear to me that she was responding to a story that was already widely known, for me that removed the aspect of her unilaterally trying to destroy their business.
Second, I am not generally a fan over kicking people out for political beliefs. Yes, at some point if someone’s a key part of an administration that’s doing monstrous things, you have to take a stand, but is Trump’s press secretary in that category?
Dreher tipped the balance in my assessment by noting a caption in the WP article I hadn’t read:
Maybe something akin to the Hamilton cast addressing Pence would have been a better approach.
Finally, I fear Dreher (not a Trump fan) is right in this assessment:
I agree that I am not a fan, because it doesn’t help and we should take the moral high ground. BUT – I don’t see what you are trying to prove in asking this question, since the answer is unequivocally YES. She is the justifier, the liar-for-the-chief, the one who tries to defend all his heinous policies, and downplays the importance of the nasty things he is doing. Her role is as enabler.
I think it was a mistaken move, and I think you are right, that it would be better to address it like the staff of Hamilton did Pence, but this question leaves me scratching my head. To try to dismiss the press secretary (any press secretary) as a key player is just incomprehensible.
Note: When I said I am not a fan in the post above, I was referring to kicking people out of restaurants, not Sanders (though I am certainly not a fan of Sanders, either).
Sanders is absolutely a key part of the Trump administration.
A more relevant distinction is whether she makes policy or not, and she doesn’t – press secretaries don’t. There are some noises in the press about how she doesn’t like carrying water for the policy (the child kidnapping policy) when she doesn’t approve of it. So, yes, when we’re calibrating guilt, it’s relevant that she neither makes nor enforces policy, she simply promotes it. But she does promote it, and she tells lies in the process, and she helps Trump in his campaign to destroy the news media.
Gloating on social media? Why? How stupid do you have to be?
Otherwise, sure, driving “conservatives” (conservatives aren’t a real thing anymore) out of the public square is a good goal to pursue…
This is one way to stand up to the people who enable and promote Trumpian policies. It’s legal. It’s a form of protest their side embraces.
I approve.
As for Sanders using her official White House account to name and shame the restaurant–THAT was unethical, and possibly illegal.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/sarah-sanders-broke-the-law-with-tweet-on-restaurant-eviction-says-ex-white-house-ethics-chief.html
Lady M, so many illegal actions have been performed by this White House. It appears to be meaningless anymore. If no one will enforce the law, what good is it? They’ve gotten away with so much now, one more tweet isn’t likely to take them down.
Sanders is arguably the most visible person in the administration outside of Presidente Soggy Cheeto, himself. She’s certainly one of the most recognizable. I don’t have any problem with someone who has taken as their primary profession lying to the public on matters of constitutional propriety and government actions, being called to task for that totally voluntary decision.
As for inflaming the Trump supporters, I honestly don’t think they can GET more inflamed. The 30% of the country that supports him will do so fanatically no matter what. The political issue is whether or not a particular action alienates or energizes a larger segment of the remainder–the Deplorables will continue to qualify as such regardless of what overtures are made to them.