Vaccinations are good, so who could question the decision of New York City’s intrepid mayor in requiring restaurants to only seat people who have been vaccinated? At this point, the assertion that “vaccinations are good” might irk people who either still harbor doubts or drank dewormer because that makes more sense than a vaccine, which we’re reliably informed causes testicles to swell. But that’s the sort of concern that typically takes one’s eye off the sucker punch about to land on the left side of your head.
It began as a simple request that is becoming part of New York’s pandemic routine: A hostess at a popular Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side asked three would-be customers for proof that they had been vaccinated as required for those seeking to dine indoors.
The 24-year-old hostess was instructed to nicely ask for proof of vaccination, not as a political cause but because that’s what her boss told her to do, and that’s what Bill deBlasio told him to do by issuing his mandate to turn this 24-year-old hostess into his covid cop. Did anyone consider who would become responsible for making the mandate happen?
But the encounter quickly escalated, as the customers, women from Texas, became irate and refused to provide the proof needed to enter the restaurant, Carmine’s, the police and a restaurant spokesman said. The hostess offered to seat them outdoors, where such proof is not required.
This didn’t need to escalate, but you know those crazy right-wing MAGA Karen anti-vax conspiracy nuts, right?
The tourists involved in the episode at Carmine’s were identified by the police as Kaeita Nkeenge Rankin, 44, and Tyonnie Keshay Rankin, 21, of Humble, Texas, and Sally Rechelle Lewis, 49, of Houston. They were arrested and charged with assault and criminal mischief before being given desk appearance tickets and ordered to return to court on Oct. 5.
Late Friday, a lawyer representing the women issued a news release in which he said they all had vaccination proof that had been “questioned arbitrarily and unjustifiably” because they are Black and that they had not tried to “forcefully violate” the requirement that they show it to enter the restaurant.
Nothing adds up here. The hostess was doing her job, as mandated by the City. The putative patrons, three black women were, according to their lawyer, vaccinated and in possession of proof of vaccination. That the hostess requested proof is hardly “arbitrary and unjustified,” but the ordinary means by which the restaurant complies with the mandate. And yet, they beat the hostess?
The lawyer, Justin Moore, also said the hostess had been injured when other Carmine’s employees restrained her after she took offense at being “called out for racial discrimination.”
Is the contention that asking black women for proof of vaccination is racial discrimination? Are they off limits because of their race, or was the hostess supposed to “believe the women” when they said they were vaccinated, and that should be good enough? Maybe the hostess said nothing different than she would have said to any other potential diner, but she was white and they were black and her asking, when black women didn’t feel like proving their word, was racist? Okay, not in the minds of most, but what if that was their “truth,” and if a black person feels that they’re being discriminated against, what white person can disagree? Only a racist, which is their point.
And, of course, if black women feel racially slighted, aren’t they entitled to give the racist white woman a whuppin’? After all, if words are violence and a beating is violence, didn’t the hostess just get what she deserved under the new rules?
As for the hostess being hurt when other restaurant employees restrained her, as opposed to the beating delivered by the three women, that’s a hard sell given the many witnesses present.
When someone gets hired to seat diners, they don’t assume their job is to be on the front line of violence from irate customers. They assume their job is to smile, seat them and hand them a menu. But the mayor changed the job.
Manuel Roque, a line cook who works at restaurants in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn, said he was frequently dispatched from the kitchen to ease tensions with customers and did not feel equipped to deal with conflicts over the mandate. The city, he said, had not provided enough formal training on how to deal with such situations.
There’s a video online supposedly teaching people how to “identify signs of aggressive behavior and to help them communicate and empathize with customers.” which would no doubt magically make everything better if anybody bothered to watch it. It had 3,000 views as of yesterday. It includes such deeply helpful advice as “acknowledge and validate their experience, even if it’s different than yours.” It’s crap.
“You don’t pay me to be a bouncer,” Mr. Roque said. “Now restaurant workers have to deal with hungry people, and angry people, and doing an extra job, and we’re not getting paid for that.”
Getting vaccinated shouldn’t be so controversial. But it is. Requiring proof of vaccination to be seated indoors in a restaurant shouldn’t be required. But it is. Restaurant employees shouldn’t be turned into covid cops at the risk of massive fines by the city. But they are. Putative patrons shouldn’t take out their feelings or politics on restaurant employees. But they do. And people who feel offended by all this shouldn’t engage in violence, regardless of their race and the litany of rationalizations for why they are entitled to do whatever they feel like doing. But they do.
And because the beating of this hostess is such an atrocious reaction to her enforcement of a mandate not of her making, the first reaction of the unduly passionate is the syllogism.
“Assaulting a restaurant worker for doing their job is abhorrent and must be punished,” Mr. Rigie said. “We’re calling on City & State to increase penalties for assaulting restaurant workers in NYC in conjunction w/enforcement of Covid-19 protocols.”
The New York Times appears to have since deleted this quote, without noting its edit. Assault is already a crime in New York, and the three women were charged and released on a desk appearance ticket. Many are wishing them a stay in Rikers Island, which is doing very poorly at the moment, as black women beating up a restaurant worker over proof of vaccination finds its place in the scheme of good and evil in the city.
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The nice thing about being in charge is that you can make rules knowing the shit will always hit someone lower down the scale, while you watch from your floor-to-ceiling window. To make it stick they will need an awful lot of Police just checking vax passbooks.
Its another version of trying to phone a tech company like Google, they are so esoteric that your computer crashing is far far below their noticing.
“I’ve got me an office, gold records on the wall
Just leave a message, maybe I’ll call…”
——-
OK, now the ol’ farts can come in and make erudite comments..
Your synapses work in strange ways.
It’s said the restaurant industry is chronically short of staffing…. all I can say is after reading this; good luck.
It’s gonna happen.
Stephen Carter.
“ On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce.”
Because I haven’t said that enough times here?
Your words of wisdom are like chocolate. You can’t get enough.
(Not a tummy rub, just an observation.)
“Any remark sufficiently clever will eventually be attributed to someone sufficiently famous” (said by the great Aaron Haspel, but will, eventually, be attributed to someone more famous).
Point taken, as I crawl back into my hovel.
This is going to be a tough one for the politically zealous of both sides because it’s gonna require them to side with someone they normally look down on. Filtering this through their belief system before responding is gonna be impossible.
CRT advocates trying to slip away from the scene without being noticed on this one. A whole lot of friendly fire incidents on twitter going down the memory hole as we speak.
“Advocates” was meant as a noun there (with an elided “are”), not as a verb. Sorry for the confusion and clutter.
As the women are from a rougher part of Texas, I’m surprised they didn’t just pull out their guns and shoot the hostess.
Of course they wouldn’t have tried that in Texas since the hostess and every other staff member would be packing.
Those of us from west Texas wouldn’t be involved in anything like this incident because we’re too intelligent to go to NY. There’s no good BBQ there.
Why is Brooklyn BBQ taking over the world?
I’m getting really off subject here, but serve that crap in Texas and you’ll get shot, and deservedly so.
The Justice of the Peace would rule it suicide.
Eh. Defense strategy aside, there are also people to blame for the erroneous belief that denial of service is a brand new concept that did not exist prior to COVID19.
When a restaurant chooses to deny service, it’s on the restaurant. You make your choices and live with them. Modestly sentient people would immediately note a difference here.
Well, I’ll tell you what. Your next dinner with Dr. SJ at Le Bernardin is on me if you can record yourself lighting up and finishing a cigar in the dining room. But if you try and get tossed, you’re flying me from Worcester to Casa de SJ in a helicopter for a dinner you make.
Nice shift in gears, but still another bad analogy.
OK fine. I know you hate analogies. Bet’s off dinners on. I’ll drive down.
I’ll decant the wine in anticipation. And I don’t smoke cigars.
I see little to distinguish this situation (restaurants being required to check a customer’s vaccination status) from bars (and some restaurants) being required to check a customer’s age.
I see a huge difference, that being that the drinking age is both a historic and universal limitation. It’s uncontroversial, been around forever and applied everywhere. The problem with bad analogies couple with “I see little” is that it makes you look either foolish or grasping at straws to rationalize why an obvious problem isn’t a problem.
This sounds like the Progressive version of the Texas abortion law, with a twist – empower/mandate local businesses to enforce a policy that the government wants without the government doing any work or exposing its agents to harm. But the local businesses do not get a bounty for catching the unvaccinated, or compensated for the aggravation, and take all the heat for the unhappiness. Requires all sorts of additional training in conflict resolution, which is a specialty of woke academia, so more jobs for them. Everyone wins.
Papers, please.
This comparison doesn’t work much better than Jake’s two efforts. The differences are manifest, not the least of which is that the Texas abortion law is unconstitutional whereas this is not, just controversial because people are selfish jerks and ad hoc because a mayor said so.
I noticed you ignored a few things when tying to put forth your view. If the women stated they showed proof of vaccination, the questioning of being vaccinated is not what they claimed is arbitrary. It was asking if their proof of vaccination was valid is what was considered arbitrary.
Additionally, the lawyer reported that they were already seated after showing proof, they also stated that they already showed proof and this women challenged them and refused them service. On the way out, she was said to say a racial slur and lunged at them due to the arguing. I don’t know if the lunge included strikes, but that is what journalism is about.
Can’t ignore information that doesn’t exist.
I was lucky enough to read three versions of this story and its byline as it was progressively edited (in both senses) over the day.
First, Ashley Wong wrote a pretty much thoroughly negative story about nasty Texans beating up the (Asian, I’ve heard, but I can’t confirm this) hostess, including the quote you, uh, quoted.
Then the article was rewritten to clarify that the Texans were black, and therefore in the right, and that questioning them was racist – Precious Fondren’s name appeared in the byline.
Finally, Christina Morales arrived to add several seemingly completely irrelevant quotes from a line chef with a Hispanic name, the manager of a Mexican restaurant, and a tourist from Mexico.
I thought that was fascinating. Everybody has an angle.
Stories like this tend to morph in various directions as the spin takes hold or new information becomes available. I, unfortunately, am constrained to work with the information available at the time a post is written. Sometimes it’s accurate. Sometimes it turns out to be inaccurate. But when the story involves sacred cows, as here, it often turns into pure spin, including claims that don’t exist or omitting facts that are inconvenient, until there’s a story for every partisan to latch onto.