The folks at Firedoglake were very excited about the story that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was kicked out of a restaurant in Madison, based on a report by a blogger in Madison:
Sometimes, it’s good to leave detached, cerebral meta-analyses of politics aside and just get a taste of public opinion being expressed the old-fashioned way.
Wisconsin blogger Naomi Houser reports tonight (via Howie Klein on Twitter):
The M******t [a restaurant] in Madison, WI confirms that on Friday night, ******* (one of the owners) politely asked Scott Walker to leave the establishment when other customers began booing him. A bartender at The M*****t said that ‘his presence was causing a disturbance to the other customers and management asked him to leave.’
Maybe he should have stayed home and ordered pizza instead? Okay, maybe not; there might be a long wait.
Houser adds regarding The M******t that readers might want to “give your patronage and thanks in person the next time you are in Madison.”
Sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t generally consider myself a snob, but in this case I’ll make an exception — I’ll be happy to dine at an establishment that knows exactly which kind of undesirables should be kept out.
*Editor note: this post was edited to remove the name of the restaurant and restaurant owner due to threats the establishment has received*
And at Democratic Underground, the folks were absolutely ecstatic over the news.
But according to Badger Blogger, the whole thing was a hoax by the restaurant itself; Walker denies ever being at the restaurant:
Well my friends, this is the case of a Madison restaurant trying to gain liberal credibility by making up a total lie about how they booted out Scott Walker out of their establishment. When BadgerBlogger called them to confirm the story, the staff refused to confirm or deny, and continued to obfuscate until they hung up the phone… But in fact, they didn’t hang up, it appears that they accidentally put the phone on speaker…. And BadgerBlogger tapes continued to roll.
Our audio captures the restaurant staff talking about how they have to take down the blog posting because people are starting to call about it, you can actually hear them logging into the blog and deleting it. Too late.
We confirm with Governor Walker’s staff that the Governor has never been to that restaurant, this was an attempted “punking” by employees of The Merchant Restaurant, but look who got punked… In the words of Joe Wilson, You Lie!
You can listen to our audio, and judge for yourself. Do not turn it off after the hang-up, that’s when it gets good.
At least there does not appear to have been a crime committed here, unlike the possible identity theft perpetrated against David Koch.
Instead, the anti-Walker forces just made fools of themselves regardless of the truth of the story. If the story were true, then the restaurant owners were creeps; if not true, then they were just a bunch of liars.
Update: In comments to a post at American Power, the author of the original blog story about the incident denies that this is a hoax or that she has any connection to the restaurant.
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Related Post:
Phony David Koch Call Wasn’t Just A Prank, It May Have Been Identity Theft
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Comments
It's so delicious when the would-be pranksters become the unwitting prankees.
Talk about a backfire!
Some publicity. Now the whole world knows the Merchant Restaurant serves Left-overs.
It's possible that the owners had nothing to do with it, to be fair. I would love it if someone called the owners and asked for comment. ^.^
OH OH! I have a GREAT idea. Let's call the restaurant and ask if their refrigerator is running.
Linked: 'Naomi Houser Comments on Suspected Restaurant Hoax'.
I fully endorse this business strategy for all liberal businesses that cater to the general public.
Kick the newly elected Republican governor of your state out of your establishment for political reasons, make sure the leftosphere gets tingles running up their leg so they all post about it. Within a day the nation will know about it. Then watch as your busines goes to hell in a handbasket because you've alientated at least half your potential customer base.
I love it. Teach it at Wharton and HBS. Hopefully, McKenzie, Booz and Bain will all pick up on it and recommend it exclusively to their liberal clients.
So now progressives are celebrating the fact that certain pre-determined "undesirables" are not allowed to dine at a restaurant.
It really wouldn't surprise me to hear renewed calls for separate drinking fountains from these people…
Liberals; they make stuff up and claim it's true. How many times have they done this?
"… even if the documents are false, that the underlying story is true."
Dan Rather.
If the facts don't fit the liberal/media narrative, THEY MAKE THEM UP.
You know that old communist standby — "The ends justify the means".
So now progressives are celebrating the fact that certain pre-determined "undesirables" are not allowed to dine at a restaurant.
As has been pointed out by people smarter than I, imagine if they'd kicked out a black man, or a gay man, or a woman in a hijab…because other patrons displayed the good manners of macaques at feeding time.
"The ends justify the means"
And, the end is when we justify the mean. Where can any of us go from there?
well they also claim the Walker excluded the police and firefighters unions because they supported him …. it turns out there are 314 state and local police and firefighter unions in WI 4 supported Walker 310 DID NOT
It turns out that this is completely untrue. Walker tells CBS News’ Chris Wragge:
There are 314 fire and police unions in the state. Four of them endorsed me. All the rest endorsed my opponent.
NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard has an impressive roundup of newspaper headlines and other proof for those not inclined to take Walker’s word for it.
I see, it's praiseworthy to harass a citizen–which the governor is–who is minding his own business in a public place and force him to leave even though he is being quiet and not bothering anyone.
Remind me again about how liberals are tolerant, open, broad-minded, and all that, because I keep forgetting.
At the Merchant Restaurant, we serve up douchebaggery, fresh!
I've read posts on this at 6-8 blogs. Can't find any news sources referring to it other than blogs. The source always traces back to Naomi Houser. The Merchant Restaurant Facebook page has a discussion "Walker OUT" but all that is there is other people's comments and no specifics or anything saying that they actually kicked Walker out.
All looks very suspicious to me. Even the report of threats made to the restaurant were reported by Houser in the comments at Fire Dog Lake. I'm not sure what kind of threats the Merchant was getting and condemn threats of violence. But, you can't expect a wholly positive reaction when publicizing something like this.
If this is a hoax, I'd bet the Merchant Restaurant is in on it as I can find no evidence they're disavowing it.
Badger Blogger has screen shots for you, DADvocate. ^.^
Thanks, Foxfier, I had visited Badger Blogger earlier. After reading about this at Ann Althouse's blog, I followed her links to Fire Dog Lake and Badger Blog. From there I went to Mind Stain. Doing a web search, I found a few other blogs discussing this. All eventually led back to Mind Stain (Naomi Houser). I was hoping to find a news source regarding this but couldn't. Still can't.
They are the news source– Mind Stain was openly connected to them, Badger's got audio of them scrubbing.
How do you get more "source" than a first hand (mis) account?