The most recent example involved Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who stopped for a bite to eat in a picturesque college town in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Lexington, at an establishment called the Red Hen. It is pictured above. It seems Ms. Sanders had ordered dinner when the owner came up and told her she would have to leave. She created no fuss and as she prepared to leave she even offered to pay for the limited service already received but was waved off by the proprietor. It seems the owner took a vote of his employees and they said she should not be served. One even went so far as to tweet and say that Ms. Sanders had created a problem when, in fact, all she did was take a seat and place an order. Little Lexington, you see, is a Deep Blue college town in a county that is Deep Red, so rather than serve the public, he decided to base a welcome to his establishment on political philosophy.
This is a parallel to a prior situation that was a bit nastier in Washington last week when Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen was run out of a restaurant by an angry crowd just because she worked for the President. And there is even a very publicly recognizable Congresswoman who is urging her supporters to harass and make life miserable for all Trump Administration employees wherever they are found, saying it's the right thing to do because God is on their side. Really, I don't know what God she worships but it surely isn't the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There is a bright light in all of this, however, for as the average American witnesses this " unhinging and dismantling of the brain" in so many, the tides of favor continue their upward tick for the President. Americans by and large are fed up with such behavior and it will garner a solid response.
Oh, and about the little restaurant in Lexington? Well, it seems that the five star rating the establishment had through the Yelp rating pages has now dropped to a two and one half star rating in just a few days. Keep it up, Mr. Owner, and you'll soon be out of business and, should that happen, you'll have no one to blame but yourself. As the old General, Russell Honore, who led the effort to make New Orleans livable again after Katrina said, "Don't get stuck on stupid."
How interesting that this little outrage would take place in the hometown of the university which adorns both the names of Washington and Robert E. Lee. That school has a long history of supporting good manners and Virginia traditions and seeing the way the earth is turning these day, we can only hope civility returns quickly.