Originally Posted by
Legion
August 2nd, 2013: Liberals assumed that Obama was denied service in a restaurant because of racism and were poutraged.
Doug Bradshaw answered the phone.
"Bea's Restaurant," he said. "Good afternoon." It was the U.S. Secret Service.
In 1950, Bradshaw's grandparents opened the Dodds Avenue restaurant that's become so beloved that, like Luther, it goes by only one name: Bea's. People eat there, for decades. A few summers ago, one couple flew in from Colorado ... just for lunch.
It's iconic. It's homegrown. Folks sop it up.
It's the perfect place for a visiting president to eat.
Cue the Secret Service phone call.
"They said the president was coming here on a Tuesday," Bradshaw said, "and wanted to know if the president could come eat lunch."
"I would have done it," said Bradshaw.
But?
"We are closed Monday and Tuesday," he said.
And that's just what he told the Secret Service.
Closed Tuesdays, every Tuesday, since 1964.
Then, as quickly as it began, the phone call ended. The Secret Service hung up.
"If it had been Wednesday, we would have loved for him to come," Bradshaw said.
End of story.
Right?
The phone call ended, but like heartburn, trouble followed. Word got out. People started chewing on assumptions and rumors, and with a little help from Internet gossip and Facebook, the story suddenly turned into this:
Bea's wouldn't serve lunch to the president.
"That's ridiculous," Bradshaw said.
In these awful days of social division, where we assume and predict the worst about one another, Bradshaw found himself in a hot mess of accusations: racist, political and more.
"It's not political and it's not racial," Bradshaw said. "It wasn't a refusal."
The Secret Service never asked if Bea's would open on Tuesday; like some jittery preteen, the agent hung up before Bradshaw could even suggest it.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/opinion/columns/story/2013/aug/02/cook-obama-and-beas/114923/
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