Soon, we’re going to hear this as the latest evidence that white Xian conservatives are truly the most oppressed population in the United States: The manager of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, told White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family to leave, allegedly because of her association with Trump.
According to Newsweek:
On Friday night, Jaike Foley-Schultz, allegedly a waiter at The Red Hen, a restaurant on Washington Street in Lexington, took to Facebook to announce that Sanders was prevented from eating at their establishment.
“I just served Sarah huckabee sanders for a total of 2 minutes before my owner kicked her out along with 7 of her other family members…” he wrote.
Huckabee has confirmed the basics, complete with a shot of piety and white tears:
Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 23, 2018
Conservatives may have a deeply-ingrained sense of victimhood and persecution, but they have no fucking sense of irony. The Republican Party has worked for decades to achieve exactly this: An America where business owners who serve the public are empowered to refuse that service based on their own personal whim. They just took a big step with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop’s refusal to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. But they want more than wedding cakes: They want the right to use fundamentalist religious beliefs about sexuality and gender as an excuse to deny emergency medical services, birth control, and every conceivable necessity. They want to wield God and capitalism (often one and the same on the Right) to decide who lives and who dies.
It would be disgusting enough on its own, but even worse is the fact that they’re not willing to live in the world they’re working so hard to make. The Trump minions are already swarming to Yelp and Facebook to bleat some variation of “So much for the tolerant left.” Because they really couldn’t do anything else. The sense of eternal persecution is essential to modern right-wing identity.
So as far as I’m concerned, I’m going to enjoy the idea of Sarah Huckabee Sanders being forced to live, if only for a few minutes, in the America that she’s worked so hard to create. I’m not going to waste a single second of regret on her.