The legions of “tolerance” have crushed another dissenter.
Ron Schneider, owner of Leon’s Frozen Custard in Milwaukee, has been forced to surrender his English-only ordering policy after complaints from ethnic agitators. It started Tuesday, May 17th, when a customer in front of a prickly Hispanic tried to order his custard in Spanish.
The server replied, “I’m not allowed to speak Spanish to you.”
This exchange prompts a number of questions, beginning with why did the customer speak Spanish in the first place? Unless I’m in the Home Depot parking lot, strangers never come up to me speaking Spanish. A gutless Congress may not have ruled English as the nation’s official language, but the citizens certainly have.
One can only conclude the server appeared to be Hispanic and the customer assumed she spoke Spanish, too. This is certainly ethnic stereotyping, but we’ll let it pass.
Next the customer evidently re-ordered in English, was served and went on about his business exiting this column forever.
That would have been the end of the encounter, if Mr. Prickly hadn’t been there. Normally he orders in English, but evidently he prefers his frozen treats with a sprinkling of outrage. So Mr. Prickly makes a big production of ordering in Spanish, only to get the same response.
After getting his custard, the next stop wasn’t the napkin dispenser. It was social media, the home of manufactured outrage provided by the ignorant and easily offended.
Naturally, Schneider and his operating policy were characterized as “racist.”
As the term is currently used, “racist” has no intrinsic meaning. As the great historian Paul Johnson wrote in his excellent “Modern Times,” the word was changed irretrievably in March 1975 when an effort to expel Israel from the UN was blocked. As an alternative, those midgets of diplomacy passed a resolution condemning Israel as “racist.”
Johnson writes, “As the American delegate Leonard Garment pointed out, the resolution was ‘ominous’ because it used ‘racism’ not as the word ‘for a very real and concrete set off injustices but merely as an epithet to be flung at whoever happens to be one’s adversary.’ It turned ‘an idea with a vivid and obnoxious meaning’ into ‘nothing more than an ideological tool.”
A tool limited to use by the left and employed most recently on custard impresario Schneider.
In a society that hadn’t completely lost it’s moorings, a trivial and foolish complaint like this would be ignored. Schneider’s wife and kids are Hispanic, making it tough to be a racist if he wants to eat dinner at home.
Second, English-only has been Leon’s policy for the past decade.
But facts didn’t matter to full-time ethnic chauvinist and part-time legislator JoCasta Zamarripa. Interviewed by the Daily Mail, she says Schneider’s policy is illegal and he “owes the community an apology.”
No. He owes the community a good product at a good price and that’s it.
A variety of more Hispanic-than-thou organizations jumped into the manufactured controversy, united in their belief that someone should sick the government on Schneider before he started putting Trump signs in the parking lot.
Distraught Anglos considered dieting, rather than eat frozen custard tainted by the stain of nationalism. #BOYCOTTLEONS gained a bit of social justice momentum as protestors began gathering. A competing business, Bounce Milwaukee, had an inspired response and offered free ice cream to anyone who ordered in a foreign language.
English-speakers, as is customary here, had to pay full freight.
Trump can wait these ethnic popinjays out. He can also afford lawsuits. But Schneider can’t. He subsequently announced his employees would be allowed to speak other languages, “If you can help the customer, just help them any way you can,” he told a local broadcast outlet.
Zamarripa’s contribution to the controversy is employees are now expected to conduct business in multiple languages for the previously English-only pay.
Unfortunately, Leon’s isn’t off the hook. The wheels of government social justice grind slowly and are designed to grind you to powder. This time next year Leon’s may be under new ownership and called León’s
This incident only proves Pancho Villa invaded the United States 100 years too early. In 1916 after he crossed the border and attacked Columbus, NM, Uncle Sam sent Gen. John J. Pershing (and my grandfather’s field artillery) to chase Villa down and bring him to justice.
Today Barack Obama would send social workers bearing vouchers.
Michael Shannon is a commentator and public relations consultant, and is the author of “A Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times.” He can be reached at mandate.mmpr@gmail.com