Posted on 08/29/2014 6:28:35 AM PDT by raccoonradio
The setting: a community garden. The central character: a respected Winooski businessman who has contributed to just about every charitable cause in the city. His offense: going out of his way to make sure a local resident didn't feel offended.
To recap: Sneakers Bistro & Café owner Marc Dysinger had erected a tongue-in-cheek sign in a community garden that he maintains for Winooski in the downtown traffic circle outside his restaurant. "Yield for Sneakers Bacon," it read.
Last week, a local woman who identified herself as "a vegan and a member of a Muslim household," posted a note on Front Porch Forum suggesting the sign was offensive. She asked that it be removed in consideration of a "large number of Muslim families in Winooski, as well as many others who do not eat pork for a variety of reasons."
Though several other Front Porch commenters politely suggested that the woman was being too sensitive, Dysinger willingly took the sign down.
The tiniest spark can ignite a brushfire of anger on the internet. Two days after she made her case on Front Porch Forum, the bacon controversy blew up.
Conservative outlets and some mainstream media, including the Washington Times, the New York Daily News, CBS Radio and the National Review picked up on the story.
Fueling the coverage was an angry mob of online commenters from across the country taking shots at the funky breakfast joint that has vintage jukeboxes at every table and a line out the door on weekend mornings.
They raged on Facebook: "Gutless, spineless, pukes. Anyone eating at this cesspool of a food establishment may as well join the rest of the jihadists trying to destroy this nation from within. May their faces and bodies be burned and seared with boiling bacon grease!"
"DON'T YOU SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THIS COUNTRY? NO ONE IS STICKING TO THEIR GUNS ... PUT THE SIGN BACK UP!!!! WE ARE GIVING INTO EVERY NIT-PICKING THING. WE ARE AMERICANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Women in Burkas on cellphones, drinking their Starbucks and driving their Toyotas badly is offensive to me. Bring back the Bacon!"
Some commenters even provided artwork: a cartoon of an animal raping a Muslim man. The journalist James Foley in the moments before he was beheaded by an ISIS terrorist. Two slices of bacon laid out in the shape of a cross.
The commenters vented on Sneakers' Facebook page. When the bistro took its page down, opponents created their own. They bombarded the restaurant with phone calls. They wrote scathing reviews of the bistro on Yelp. They called Winooski City Hall and threatened city officials, who had no role in the issue.
While some media outlets reported the sign protester was a Muslim, giving rise to the anti-Islam vitriol, Winooski City Manager Katherine Decarreau confirmed that she is not. The laid-back administrator also felt compelled to tell a reporter without a hint of irony or humor on Monday morning: "No, we don't have terrorists in our neighborhoods." An hour later, Decarreau issued a press release — the first time she has done so in her five years in office — calling for people to remain calm and act with "respect" for each other.
A Seven Days blog post about the brouhaha drew dozens of online comments. Some were local, but many were from IP addresses in faraway states: California, Alabama, Oregon. While some simply voiced levelheaded criticism of Sneakers taking down a sign they found inoffensive, others posted comments that would make some readers squirm.
The woman whose post set it all off declined to comment for this story.
"She's hurting," said Decarreau, who has been in touch with the woman. "She didn't realize this is what would happen. If there's a lesson, it's that [online forums] are not the way to deliver a message to an individual or agency. You need to reach out directly to people."
Michael Wood-Lewis of Front Porch Forum agrees. Lamenting the ugly out-of-state reactions to a post that had "too many hallmarks of a sound-bitey, link-bait story," he put a positive spin on it: "There are a lot of bacon conversations going on in Winooski this week. I don't know if it's community building. But it's people talking to each other face to face, which is our goal."
Sneakers' owner, Dysinger, was doing a brisk business Tuesday morning, preparing food for the breakfast crowd. Citing a desire to move on, he declined to comment.
Others spoke up for him, though.
Decarreau ran through some of Dysinger's good deeds: He and his staff had volunteered to paint the city's pool house this summer. He has maintained a community garden on the downtown traffic circle for 10 years and replanted it three times in recent months after wayward drivers destroyed it.
"Whenever we need businesses to step up, they're among the first in line," she said.
Winooski Police Chief Steve McQueen is retiring at the end of the week. He could never have imagined his last public-safety challenge would involve bacon: His officers have been keeping close tabs on the bistro and monitoring threats that have come into city hall, in case hateful rhetoric metastasizes into hateful action.
"We're keeping an extra eye on it," McQueen said.
Nothing has happened. But the online invective has proven beyond anyone's control: The angry mob even turned against a person who initially gave the outraged a platform to vent.
George Imperatore started the "Tell Sneakers Bistro How You Really Feel," Facebook page from his home in New Jersey on Monday after reading about the controversy online.
"I'm just tired of PC run amok," Imperatore said in a phone interview on Monday. "It's not like they had a sign on their front that said, 'We hate Muslims, We won't serve Muslims.' We've reached the point in this country where everyone's position is so rigid that we're missing respect and courtesy these days."
Imperatore said he tried to instill some respect and courtesy on the page, which he launched after Sneakers took down its Facebook page. Imperatore repeatedly urged posters to avoid cursing and threats and "name calling and the other stuff." He appears to have removed a few of the most offensive images from the site.
But they kept coming.
Imperatore even started receiving angry private messages from commenters, prompting him to publicly declare that he didn't work for Sneakers.
He's never even been to Winooski.
People rave about their food on Yelp--again, my omelette was so-so but some people do like them. One spotlight review on Yelp mentions the Canadian bacon...bacon? ---BACON???--- You mean they didn't take it off their menu out of respect for that ONE person (who may or may not have even been into the place) who complained?
The lesson I would've drawn is that perhaps some messages, especially those involving How Offended I AM, shouldn't be delivered on any medium.
I think it would be easier to remove/dispose of the person who made the complaint. One person complained because they felt “uncomfortable,” and wound up offending a lot more people.
I’m willing to wager that most of those middle class won’t be eating there anymore. I’m willing to bet that there is a large group of persons in this town that think the guy is a spineless sack. He did it for other reasons, I bet he was threatened, or his family. By the muslim dogs in the city.
Or maybe he thought it would get him business. Too bad old fart, enjoy your retirement while you contribute to the downfall of American society.
Notice the “reporter” doesn’t spend one sentence inquiring as to who are these “large number of Muslim families” and how exactly they all ended up in this small Vermont town.
When in America, as in Rome, DO as the ROMANS do.
“They raged on Facebook: “Gutless, spineless, pukes. Anyone eating at this cesspool of a food establishment may as well join the rest of the jihadists trying to destroy this nation from within. May their faces and bodies be burned and seared with boiling bacon grease!”
+++++
Given everything, I think that’s a proper, reserved, response.
Either that, or threaten to do some beheading ourselves.
Michael Wood-Lewis of Front Porch Forum agrees. Lamenting the ugly out-of-state reactions to a post that had "too many hallmarks of a sound-bitey, link-bait story," he put a positive spin on it: "There are a lot of bacon conversations going on in Winooski this week. I don't know if it's community building. But it's people talking to each other face to face, which is our goal."
Hyphenated name, references to "community building." I bet this guy sits down to pee.
PS: "Bacon converations"? LOL.
She's a complicit terrorist broodmare.
Get them out of here.
EXCELLENT
DITTO.
Hippies. Hippies stink. They’re all for “Give peace a chance” as long as they get their way.
...how many people would point out what an idiot she is, her only hope now is that her name doesn't become public so she can remain an anonymous idiot.
Diversity-whites need only apply!
We just spent a week in Niagara Falls area, visiting hubby’s 88 year old bro. Which meant every meal was eat out. Some of the places we went had Sea Food on the menu. I’m allergic to it. So I just opted for a hamburger or a salad if they did the sea food on the same grill. And Hold the SALT, not every person can consume the over salted foods served.
Now what was so hard about that stupid woman in VT?
If a item is on the menu you can’t eat, by pass it and shut the Heck up. If you have a issue with the foods on a restaurants, chose not to go there. Publicity seeking lawsuit happy mussie!
Screw the perpetually offended. Lets get back to jokes about Wops, Micks, Spics, Pollocks, Krauts, and any others that you can name. Although I would draw the line at Porch Monkey and some others. That could be offensive.
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