The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fear and Loathing in a Highgate Mansion: Johnny Depp Is Decadent and Depraved

Posted on | June 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in 2003 (left) and as a loser in 2018 (right).

If you haven’t read Rolling Stone‘s 10,000-word profile of Johnny Depp, I can summarize it briefly: He’s wrecked. He’s ruined. The Pirates of the Caribbean star has utterly destroyed his career and reputation, and is rapidly approaching financial ruin. The drug-addled 55-year-old actor is living out a 21st-century version of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress.

Do you realize that the five Pirates films grossed a combined $4.5 billion? And that Depp’s cut of that gold mine was $600 million? Basic arithmetic tells you that Depp was making $40 million a year — about $750,000 a week — for more than a decade, and there is no logical explanation for why he should be teetering on the brink of bankruptcy now, except for the unfortunate fact that Johnny Depp is a fool. When he first starred as Jack Sparrow, Depp was 40 and had been a celebrity for almost 20 years. He became a teen idol in the late 1980s for his role on the TV series 21 Jump Street, and it’s bizarre to compare the pathetic wreck Depp has become to the handsome young star whose face was once a pinup on the bedroom walls of nearly every 14-year-old girl in America.

Johnny Depp as a teen magazine pinup idol in 1988.

What happened to Johnny Depp? It’s a long and sordid story. Rolling Stone reporter Stephen Rodrick spent three days interviewing Depp at the mansion the actor is renting in London’s Highgate neighborhood, and found Depp mired in self-pity, bitterly scapegoating others for a series of personal and financial misfortunes that are actually his own fault.

Depp is suing his former business manager, accusing Joel Mandel’s firm of swindling him out money. The lawsuit itself was evidence of Depp’s bad judgment because, by suing Mandel’s firm, he gave them a pretext to countersue. When the press got hold of their complaint, detailing the prodigal extravagance of the actor’s lifestyle, the result was a devastating public-relations disaster for Depp, who was already radioactive because of his nasty 2016 divorce from actress Amber Heard. One of the little details Rodrick captures is that one of Depp’s tattoos has been recently altered from “SLIM” (his nickname for Heard) to “SCUM.”

Amber Heard was Mrs. Johnny Depp just long enough to destroy him.

Never marry a bisexual. Excuse me for saying that, but Depp’s marriage to the openly bisexual Heard certainly isn’t the first example of a discernible pattern — guy with a kinky streak marries a bisexual woman thinking he’s found the gold mine of sexual adventure, only to discover that “bisexual” is a synonym for emotionally disturbed.

As a young man, Johnny Depp cut quite a swath through Hollywood, dating actress Winona Ryder and supermodel Kate Moss before settling down in 1998 with French actress Vanessa Paradis, with whom he had two children, Lily-Rose and Jack. In 2006, Depp credited fatherhood with helping him hit his stride as an actor. “You have to have some sort of legacy in truth and honesty that you leave to your kiddies and the people you love,” he said in an interview after the release of the second Pirates film, saying fatherhood gave him a “real foundation, a real strong place to stand in life, in work, in everything.”

Five years later, Depp threw that foundation away. Heard was cast as Depp’s romantic interest in The Rum Diary, based on Hunter S. Thompson’s early novel about his dissolute life as a young reporter in Puerto Rico. Since Depp was executive producer of the movie, obviously he must have approved Heard for that role and, if he was casting his new girlfriend, so to speak, he certainly had an excellent eye for beauty.

Beware of pretty faces that you find.
A pretty face can hide an evil mind. . . .
Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow.

The lyrics of that old R&B hit might have saved Johnny Depp a world of woe and a lot of money. The plot of The Rum Diary has Depp’s character stealing Heard’s character away from her fiancé, a real-estate developer who is also his boss, which is rather ironic, in retrospect.

Amber Heard was only 22 when she starred with Depp in The Rum Diary.

When filming of The Rum Diary began in 2009, Heard was not yet 23, and Johnny Depp was 45, although he was playing a much younger character. (Thompson was 24 when he wrote the novel.) Heard was a lapsed Catholic girl from Texas who had become an atheist libertarian and a lesbian — or, at least, a lesbian’s girlfriend. In 2008, Heard became the lover of L.A. photographer Tasya van Ree, a woman 10 years her senior. This could not have been a secret to Johnny Depp. Heard publicly “came out” in 2010 at a gay media gala in Hollywood:

I think when I became aware of my role in the media, I had to ask myself an important question “Am I part of the problem?” And I think that when millions and millions of hard-working, tax paying Americans are denied their rights and denied their equality you have to ask yourself what are the factors that are an epidemic problem and that’s what this is. Injustice can never be stood for. It always must be fought against and I just was sick of it being a problem. . . .
I think that the injustice of people staying in the closet is more than I can bear with a clear conscience and I couldn’t sleep at night if I was a part of that problem, if I was part of the lies.
I personally think that if you deny something or if you hide something you’re inadvertently admitting it’s wrong. I don’t feel like I’m wrong. I don’t feel like millions of people are wrong because they love who they love or they were born how they were born. I’m proud to be on the right side of history and I can do nothing more than encourage people to look at their lives and ask “What side of history am I on? Am I doing the right thing or am I doing the wrong thing?”

Oh, no, “the right side of history”!

If her atheism and bisexuality were not enough to warn any man to avoid Amber Heard, that phrase should have been the final deal-breaker. Never date anyone who thinks they’re on “the right side of history.”

Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot — totalitarians always claim to “be on the right side of history,” as Johnny Depp was about to learn.

What was Johnny thinking when he decided to abandon the mother of his two children to take up with a girl half his age who’d been dating a lesbian since she was 22? Well, of course, he wasn’t thinking at all, at least not with the frontal lobes of his cerebral cortex.

Feminists insist that human sexual behavior is “socially constructed,” as if nothing as simple as primal urges could be involved. The thin veneer of civilization which restrains humanity’s animal instincts is more fragile than some allegedly enlightened intellectuals would have us believe. What do we expect to happen when a former teen idol who has made a fortune playing a pirate — by definition, an outlaw — encounters a beautiful young atheist lesbian who considers her sexuality a political statement about being on “the right side of history”?

 

“Don’t do it, Johnny!” the ghostly voice of Hunter S. Thompson might have been heard warning Depp. “Can’t you see that girl is crazy? She’s as decadent and depraved as Churchill Downs on Derby Day!”

Alas, Depp didn’t heed any voices of caution, ghostly or otherwise. Basic common sense, or the lyrics of that 1966 Johnny Rivers song, should have been enough to tell him that Amber Heard was just poison in a pretty package, but when a guy’s making $40 million a year, he probably figures he can afford to take a long-shot gamble like that. Depp, who had never bothered to marry the mother of his children, dumped her for Heard in 2012, and the couple were married in February 2015. All the omens of the Depp-Heard romance were bad from the start. The Rum Diary was a box-office disaster, panned by critics and ignored by audiences, earning barely half the $45 million it cost to produce. Depp’s marriage to Heard lasted barely a year. She filed for divorce in May 2016, and in December of that year, Heard publicly accused Depp of domestic violence.

She’s on “the right side of history,” remember?

It’s as if a terrible curse has befallen Johnny Depp:

Over the past 18 months, there has been little but bad news for Depp. In addition to the financial woes, there were reports he couldn’t remember his lines and had to have them fed to him through an earpiece. He had split from his longtime lawyer and agent. And he was alone. His tabloid-scarred divorce from actress Heard is complete, but not before there were persuasive allegations of physical abuse that Depp vehemently denies. Depp’s inner circle had begged him to not wed Heard or to at least obtain a prenup. Depp ignored his loved ones’ advice. And there were whispers that Depp’s recreational drug and alcohol use were crippling him.
During my London visit, Depp is alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent. The days begin after dark and run until first light. There is a scared, hunted look about him. Despite grand talks about hitting the town, we never leave the house. As Depp’s mind leads us down various rabbit holes, I often think of a line that he recited as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland: “Have I gone mad?”

You can read the rest of that sad tale, and if you have sons — I’ve got four of them — you should send it to them via email or Facebook, as a warning of what horrors might await them, should they ever be foolish enough to think they can live like a Caribbean pirate in real life.

Captain Jack Sparrow is now shipwrecked, and probably doomed beyond all hope of redemption. Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.



 

 

Category: Celebrities, Fear. Loathing., Hollywood

Summer Reading List

Posted on | June 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho

Good heavens, it’s been almost six months since I sat down and bashed out a book post. I’ll try to be a little more regular about it, maybe step it up to quarterly from semi-annual. We’ll see how it goes.For those of you who have forgotten how these posts work, here’s the FAQ from about five years ago. I am also amenable to bribery if you have a book you want my opinion on, whether it needs praise or burial. There’s a master list of previous book posts here.

Going from most recent to most aged, I’ll start off with the first two issues of Castalia House’s long-awaited Alt*Hero comics, Crackdown and Rebel’s Cell, which take us to a world where superheroes are mostly government-controlled, especially in the EU where the first issue is set. But as we can see in the closing pages of that issue, even in Europe there are superpowered people not on board with that plan…I read both issues on my Kindle Fire, which does a very good job of rendering the comics, and as far as art and story go, the series is off to a good start.

Back in 2017 I reviewed Mark Wandrey’s Cartwright’s Cavaliers, the first book in the Revelations Cycle he co-wrote with Chris Kennedy. The good news is that the other three novels (Asbaran Solutions, Winged Hussars, and Golden Horde) that set the stage by introducing you to the other companies of the Four Horsemen are every bit as good, and even the short story collection A Fistful of Credits, which includes some names you might recognize -Brad Torgerson, Chris Nuttall, Jon Del Arroz, etc. – upholds the standard. I admit that I jumped ahead to read Chris Kennedy’s A Fiery Sunset, in which the war the Revelations Cycle sets the stage for breaks out, before finishing all 12(!) of the books in the cycle, but I couldn’t wait to see where this was going. This is a great series, full of interesting characters with serious problems in a universe where there’s a lot of strange things and stranger aliens yet to be (re)discovered. Highly Recommended.

On a more practical note, Maggie Hogarth has a second how-to book for artists, writers, and other creative types: Business For The Right-Brained. This is another Three Jaguars book, chock-full of illos featuring Business Manager, Marketer, and most importantly, Artist, but also loaded with practical advice, including the all-important question: do you really want to make a career out of art, regardless of the medium? I can’t recommend this book highly enough; in fact, I took the unusual step of buying it in paperback.

Finally, in the It’s Old But It’s Good Department, Mike Williamson’s A Long Time Until Now is another entry in the “modern soldiers in the past” subgenre, and a very good one it is. Two MRAPs full of assorted grunts, Air Force civil affairs troops, and an engineering lieutenant who’s feeling very much out of his depth wind up being dropped into Paleolithic times, along with small bands of other displaced people including Romans. It’s an absorbing read, and handles the complex personal relations of the squad as they try to figure out what’s going on and deal with it. There are supposed to be sequels on the way, and I for one am looking forward to them.


Category: Books

In The Mailbox: 06.25.18

Posted on | June 25, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 06.25.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Ali Watkins – Zaftig NYT Reporter Who’ll Sleep With You For A Story
Twitchy: Conside Yourself Warned – Resistance Member Coming “With Pliers And A Blowtorch”
Louder With Crowder: Tracey Ullman Hosts A Hilarious Woke Support Group, also, MEDIA HYSTERIA BORDER BULLCRAP!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The I Want It Now Edition, also, The Sunday Cooking Thread – How To Dress A Salad
American Power: Patrick Buchanan, Suicide Of A Superpower, also, Democrats Divided On Violent Confrontations?
American Thinker: Leftist Thugs Guarantee Another Scalise Tragedy, also, Insurrection Is Here
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Saturday Gingermageddon
BattleSwarm: China’s Semiconductor Play, also, SCOTUS Validates (Most) Texas Redistricting
CDR Salamander: It’s A Midrats Midsummer Free-For-All, also, The Future Is Distributed
Da Tech Guy: Segregation Now! also, Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Don Surber: Why The Resistance Is Futile, also, Liberals Argue Against Civil Rights Act Of 1964
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, Doing Social Media Wrong
Fausta: What To Wear To This Week’s Political Theater?
First Street Journal: OPEC To Raise Production, Lower Crude Prices, also, The Left Might Just Regret This Tactic
The Geller Report: Maxine Waters Says Leftists Are “Going To Harass” Administration Officials In Public, also, U.S. Freezes “Palestinian” Jihad Aid Budget
Hogewash: Programming Announcement, also, First Cakes, Now Flowers, also also Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: I Admire His Optimism! also, Let Them Eat, Well, Whatever Is On The Menu
Legal Insurrection: Astroturfed “Families Belong Together” 6/30 Protest Sure Looks Like An Open Borders Movement, also, DHS Issues Safety Warnings After Official Finds Burned Animal Carcass On Porch
Power Line: Trump Says It’s Time To Deny Entry To Illegals, also, It’s Crazies All The Way Down
Shark Tank: Democrats Move To Exploit Illegal Immigrant Decisions, also, FL AG Pam Bondi Harassed At Movie Screening
STUMP: Mornings With Meep, also, Memory Monday – Third Week Of June 1918
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler Intermission – No Crying Edition
The Political Hat: Mathematics As Oppression
This Ain’t Hell: Norks Erasing Anti-US Propaganda, also, Italy Turns Away Migrants
Victory Girls: Celebrities’ Cheap Stunt Protest Ignores Border Crossing Reality
Volokh Conspiracy: A Quick Due-Process Lesson For The President
Weasel Zippers: DNC Vice Chair Keith Ellison Affirms Muslims Can Prepare Pork For Infidels, also, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) Agrees With Maxine Waters On Public Confrontations
Megan McArdle: Goodbye, Tax-Free Internet Sales
Mark Steyn: Clown Ascending A Staircase


Hans Schantz’ A Rambling Wreck Still Just 99 Cents – Last Day!
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Category: Linkagery

News That @CNN Is Ignoring

Posted on | June 25, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Today, I’m watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and they’re doing their usual wall-to-wall anti-Trump propaganda, which means that CNN viewers don’t know what’s actually happening in the real world:

On May 22, Susanna Maria Feldman went missing. It was the day after the Jewish holiday of Shavuot which celebrates G-d’s revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and a nation of freed slaves.
The fifth commandment is, “Honor thy father and mother.” The sixth is, “Thou shalt not murder.”
And in the German city of Mainz, whose Jewish community dates back to Roman times, a worried mother waited for the worst. Susanna had gone off with her friends. They came home. And she didn’t.
Her mother received a WhatsApp message from her daughter’s phone on the afternoon of the 22nd. “Mom, I’m not coming home. I went to Paris with my friend. Don’t look for me. I’ll come back after 2 or 3 weeks. Bye.”
According to Diana, Susanna’s mother, the message sounded nothing like her daughter. 4 hours later, the teenage girl’s phone was switched off. There was nothing more.
“I hope and pray that nothing bad has happened to her,” she posted on Facebook. “Please help me find my daughter safe again.”
The police reassured the frantic mother that her daughter had just gone off with some friends and would come back on her, but she feared the worst while the authorities stonewalled.
On June 1, she published an open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel in which she wrote, “I feel abandoned by the German state.”
Two weeks passed.  The police searched. Dogs sniffed around but found nothing. And then someone noticed a flash of white among all that brown and green. It was the white of a clothing label.
They found her body between the railroad tracks and Autobahn 66. The killer had stashed the girl under a bush and covered her over with twigs to keep the body out of sight and to buy him some time.
Susanna’s body had been dumped a few hundred meters from the refugee shelter where her alleged killer had been living. The traffic noise of the highway would have covered any sounds the young Jewish girl might have made as a Muslim refugee brutally raped and then strangled her to death.
At only 14, a year younger than Anne Frank when she died, Susanna had been murdered in Germany.  The teenage girl had been strangled to death after being raped. Her killer then boasted of the crime.
While the German police were searching for Susanna’s body, the Bashar family, all eight of them, were on their way back to Iraq. The Bashar clan had been living in a refugee shelter even though they were apparently able to afford to book eight tickets to Turkey. The tickets were bought under different names than the ones they had used to apply for asylum in Germany. By June 2, they were back in Iraq. . . .

You can read the rest of that by Daniel Greenfield.

What infuriates me — and what should infuriate everyone — is that this atrocity is being ignored by CNN and other liberal “news” networks. Why is our nation so divided that the White House press secretary is denied service in a Virginia restaurant? Because the people who produce “news” are instead promoting partisan propaganda for Democrats. If CNN viewers think Trump is Hitler, nobody at CNN will tell them differently. Meanwhile a Jewish girl is murdered in Germany and they don’t care.

CNN is anti-Trump 24/7, and anything that doesn’t fit that narrative — e.g., Iraqi immigrants who rape and murder Jewish girls — is ignored.

If you’re not angry about that, you should be. I’m sitting here in my home office with the TV tuned to CNN, and my blood is boiling. They should be ashamed of themselves, but I guess if they had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t be working for CNN in the first place.



 

Category: CNN, Germany

Rule 5 Sunday: Girls In The Desert

Posted on | June 24, 2018 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

No deep meanings or cultural references today, just a pic of a cute girl sitting out in the sun and sand.

A dame amidst the dunes

Ninety Miles from Tyranny leads off with Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #293, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. American Power returns with Kara Del Toro, Ireland Baldwin, Bella Thorne, Kate Upton and Alexis Ren, Demi Rose, Lily Rose Depp, and Delilah Hamlin.

EBL’s got US Open Open Mike Rule 5, Navy Lady Drivers, Ann Margret, Which Way Did They Go?, National Martini Day, Gun Control, Lucy Rose Jones, Guinspen Inspired Tribute To The Fallen, Female Russian Soccer Hooligans, Indiara Sfair, and You Know Nothing (Yet) Jon Snow.

A View From The Beach has Banking on Elizabeth Banks, Ocean City Topless Fight Goes to the Feds, Summertime, Rainy Day Women, Resigned to More Russiagate, Chinese Blogger Censored for Historical Insight, Hooligans Gonna Hoolig, Entirely Too Much Like Real Life, Round and Round with Russiagate, Model Stops Race in its Tracks, Russiagate: Vive le Resistance! and Your Five Minutes of Hate.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Natalie Eva Marie, his Vintage Babe is Nina Wayne, Dita Von Teese is shaken, not stirred, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Victoria’s Secret. At Dustbury, it’s Pier Angeli and Allie Ayers.

Thanks to everyone for their luscious links!

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Amazon Fashion – Jewelry For Women

Category: Rule 5

Adolphology for the Godwin-Win

Posted on | June 24, 2018 | Comments Off on Adolphology for the Godwin-Win

by Smitty
Soopermexican was riffing on the Sarah Sanders ejection story. But if you’re going to cross the line on Godwin’s Law, why not broad jump the thing?

Category: Uncategorized

Immigration Facts the Media Ignore

Posted on | June 24, 2018 | Comments Off on Immigration Facts the Media Ignore

In January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech in Norfolk, Virginia, and shared some facts that the media habitually ignore:

Any crime committed by improperly vetted immigrants — and especially illegal aliens — is, by definition, preventable. Even one victim of a crime committed by an illegal alien is too many. Criminals have no right to demand entry to the United States. We should strive to never admit criminals. And yet thousands of Americans across our country have suffered because of decades of lax immigration policies and even more lax enforcement.
Last month, we released another report with the Department of Homeland Security, which revealed that there were nearly 40,000 known or suspected aliens in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons. That’s roughly one in five federal prisoners. That means that the immigrant share of the federal prison population is nearly two-thirds greater than their share of the general population.
Out of those in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for housing those awaiting trial, nearly 20,000 were foreign-born. That is more than one third. And nearly triple their share of the general population.
I’m sure you’ve heard that immigrants are less likely to commit a crime than average. But one study that just came out looked at the prison population in Arizona and found that illegal aliens are more than twice as likely to be convicted of crimes as Arizonans.
They’re more likely to be convicted of sexual assault, robbery, and driving under the influence. They’re more than twice as likely to be convicted of murder.
Tens of thousands of crimes have been committed in this country that would never have happened if our immigration laws were enforced and respected like they ought to be.
Just three days ago, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Southern California was charged with rape of an intoxicated victim and first-degree burglary. He’s a driver for a ride-sharing company. He allegedly took advantage of intoxicated female passengers who got into his car. Under the laws of this country, he shouldn’t even be here.

Do we have a shortage of criminals in the United States? Do our prisons have empty cells because we don’t have enough rapists and murderers? Are our police officers sitting around bored, with nothing to do all day, because not enough people are breaking the law to keep the cops busy?

You see that the Attorney General is not suggesting that all, or even most, immigrants are criminals. The point is that, when we compare two groups — people born in the U.S. versus immigrants —  the latter group has a higher rate of crime, which might lead us to a simple conclusion: More immigration means more crime. Such a simple conclusion may be true, without being either fair or accurate. Let me explain . . .

If we have a large number of illegal aliens (who have shown a willingness to break the law simply by being here) who are lumped into the larger category “immigrants,” along with people who have obeyed the laws and followed the rules, then we may suspect that it is the illegals who are most responsible for the higher categorical crime rate. If this suspicion is correct, stricter enforcement of immigration laws, by reducing the number of illegals, would also lower the overall rate of crime among all immigrants, including illegal aliens, because they would have fewer law-breaking associates with whom to engage in drug trafficking, etc.

If the American people were made aware of facts like those reported by the Attorney General, every intelligent person would understand this. You don’t need a Ph.D. in sociology, but just basic common sense, to see why stricter enforcement of immigration laws would yield benefits for everyone, including immigrants themselves. Wouldn’t the average Hispanic citizen encounter less prejudice if, because of strict enforcement, his neighbors didn’t have a reason to suspect he might be here illegally? Wouldn’t residents of predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods be safer if there were fewer illegal aliens among them?

Conservatives would gladly welcome a discussion of immigration based on a full consideration of facts, but liberals don’t want such a discussion. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are engaged in promoting dishonest partisan propaganda, falsely smearing Republicans as “racist,” and many Republicans are so afraid of this smear that they will do anything to appease the open-borders lobby. America is therefore having a fact-deficient political screaming match about immigration, rather than the kind of discussion that might lead to policies that would benefit everyone, including immigrants. One thing is clear, however: Democrats are no more interested in improving the lives of foreign immigrants than they are in improving the lives of Americans. Democrats care only about gaining power (i.e., winning midterm congressional elections) and they are willing to tell any lie, or suppress any fact, to achieve that goal.



 

 

Category: Democrats, Immigration, Media Bias

No Republicans Allowed: Restaurant Owner Ejects WH Spokeswoman

Posted on | June 24, 2018 | 2 Comments

 

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant where Republican customers are not welcome:

Stephanie Wilkinson, co-owner of The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., told The Washington Post on Saturday that Sanders’s support of President Trump’s desire to ban transgender people from the military, in particular, was antithetical to her beliefs.
The restaurant employs several LGBT employees, Wilkinson said, some of whom voiced concerns over serving Sanders because of her previous comments defending Trump’s proposed ban.
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson added. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
Wilkinson told the Post Sanders worked in an administration that is “inhumane and unethical.”
She added that the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families who are apprehended illegally entering the U.S. also contributed to her staff’s concerns. . . .
“Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave,” Wilkinson said she told her staff. “They said yes.”

Ms. Wilkinson is a Democrat who hates Republicans so much that she does not want to serve any Republican customers. Could I offer an intelligent discussion of the Trump administration policies that Ms. Wilkinson criticized? Yes, but you cannot argue with hate. No amount of facts or logic can persuade someone like Ms. Wilkinson, whose beliefs are based in an irrational prejudice. She hates all Republicans, and there is no point wasting your time by arguing with partisan fanatics.

A basic principle of courtesy is that one should never go where one is unwelcome. This is why, for example, I have never participated in any kind of “counter-protest,” although I’ve covered quite a few during my journalism career. When the Revolutionary Communist Party held a protest at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, I was there with my camera and notebook, but I certainly did not argue with that ranting mob of anti-American extremists.

 

Sometimes, courtesy is just smart business. If I had told those Commies what I really thought of them (i.e., “the only good Communist,” etc.), this might have interfered with my ability to get the story, and perhaps endangered my personal safety. So I just kept my mouth shut and did the job I was there to do. And this has been my practice at all manner of events. Covering Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2008, for example, I was unctuously polite to her staff, and even met Chelsea Clinton, who struck me as very nice young lady.

If a right-winger like me can be courteous to Communists and Democrats, why can’t Ms. Wilkinson be courteous to Republicans?

 

Like all Americans, Ms. Wilkinson and her employees at the Red Hen restaurant are entitled to their opinions on matters of public policy, but her rudeness toward Republicans is not smart business. Lexington, Virginia, is in Rockbridge County, which voted 62% for Trump in 2016. Lexington is also home to Virginia Military Institute, where the corps of cadets are legendary for their patriotic courage. For a restaurant owner in Lexington to insult the President of the United States, by refusing service to a member of the White House staff, is not likely to help Ms. Wilkinson’s business, to say the least. Would I want any of the 6,671 Rockbridge County residents who voted for President Trump to protest the Red Hen, or to say mean things to Ms. Wilkinson or her staff? No, of course not. Such behavior is rude, and also unnecessary.

Because a courteous person would never go where he is unwelcome, and because Republicans are unwelcome at the Red Hen restaurant, the polite thing for Republicans to do is to avoid Ms. Wilkinson’s establishment. Fortunately for Republicans in Rockbridge County, downtown Lexington offers many other excellent dining choices, including Niko’s Grille, Salerno Pizzeria and the Southern Inn. No courteous Republican would ever protest at the Red Hen, for the simple reason that no Republican should ever go near the Red Hen, where the owners and staff hate Republicans so much they would not serve dinner to Sarah Sanders.

Also, courtesy would solve both of the policy issues Ms. Wilkinson mentioned in justifying her “no Republicans allowed” attitude. If the U.S. military does not want transgender troops in its ranks, a courteous transgender person would simply not volunteer for the military, and if the United States doesn’t want foreigners to cross its borders without legal permission, no courteous person would be an illegal alien.

Good manners solve many problems in life, and let’s hope courtesy will soon solve the problem of Ms. Wilkinson’s anti-Republican restaurant.



 

 

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump, Virginia
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