THERE'S MORE TO THE PICTURE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy once exclaimed in outrage, “It’s the most unheard-of thing I’ve ever heard of.”  That comment applies to a couple of stories that I heard this week.  One of them is a national scandal, while the other is local Tucson oddity.

A week ago, I’d never heard of Harvey Weinstein.  Apparently he was well-known in Hollywood, both as a power broker and as a pervert.  Now, thanks to several courageous women and a few determined reporters, Weinstein’s history of predatory behavior is out in the open, while Weinstein himself is hiding.  

It didn’t take long for Republicans to tie Weinstein’s monstrous behavior to the Democratic Party.  That didn’t surprise me, since I wrote about the guilt-by-association tactic a couple of weeks ago, in a post titled “But Their Tribes Fought With Each Other.”  Harvey Weinstein donated lots of money to Democrats.  There are, therefore, plenty of photos of him schmoozing with prominent Democrats. 

Of course, as the photo accompanying this post demonstrates, quite a few people got their pictures taken while schmoozing with Harvey Weinstein.  Birds of a feather, in the case of Weinstein and Trump.

When the scandal broke, Republicans immediately went on the offensive, eliding the difference between donor and candidate, demanding immediate denunciations, and after those denunciations came out, criticizing them for not coming faster. 

That’s all part of the strategy, but it’s more than that.  It also involves a tremendous amount of projection.  If you pay attention to Republican agitprop, from Donald Trump’s tweets to organized media smear campaigns, you’ll soon notice that Republicans love to accuse their opponents of doing what they’re doing themselves.  Republicans are the same people, after all, who ignored or defended the behavior of Donald J. Trump. 

Nearly 63 million Republicans voted for Trump.  No Democrat ever voted for Harvey Weinstein. 

As Republicans understand quite well, Weinstein is far from unique.  Roger Ailes was the Republican Weinstein.   I’ll be surprised if more revelations about powerful men in show business don’t surface soon, and I’ll also be surprised if there aren’t similar stories about powerful conservative men, in the media and in politics.   Wealthy and powerful men are not invariably sexual predators, but as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”   

In this case, the cliché is true:  Both sides do it.  But that’s a really banal and unhelpful observation.  If both sides do it, both sides should stop.

The obvious antidote to both parties’ reliance on ridiculously wealthy donors is public campaign financing.  Tax everyone – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and give the money to both parties.  Or to as many parties as can meet a specified threshold of credibility. 

Another thing I’d never heard of a week ago was Cup It Up.  Unless you live in Tucson, you’re probably unfamiliar with Cup It Up, which is – or was – a restaurant located in the shopping district just west of the University of Arizona campus.  They served their meals in cups, and apparently the place was pretty popular among university folks. 

Then two of the restaurant’s three partners got a bee in their bonnet.  They were mad because some professional football players protested before or during the national anthem.  I don’t share that view, but I can spare a little sympathy for business owners who have strong political opinions and feel they can’t share them because they don’t have the luxury of offending potential customers.  Not so these two guys.  Instead of fuming privately, or putting some American flag decals in the restaurant window, they decided to launch the dumbest advertising campaign ever.

They wrote a pro-Trump screed on the restaurant’s Facebook page, calling for a boycott of the NFL.  And since they were on a roll, they decided to add a denial of global warming, opposition to Obamacare, and a call for mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.  They capped it off by announcing that their restaurant would no longer show NFL games on their big screen TVs.  That happened last Friday.

You will not be shocked to learn that those sentiments did not go over well with their customers, most of whom were from the university community.  The restaurant’s Facebook page got slammed, and its Yelp rating began to suffer.  As customers learned about the new policy, calls for a boycott began to spread.  Staff quit.  And the third partner, who hadn’t been consulted about the Facebook rant, was also upset.  He resigned on Saturday.  By Monday, it was all over.  The two remaining partners decided to close up shop.

The two pro-Trump partners have claimed that they received criticism and even threats.  Threats are bad, period.  You folks out there, please don’t threaten people. 

But criticism?  No one is immune from criticism, especially people who deliberately choose to politicize their business, having seriously misjudged their customer base in the process.  The University neighborhood, and mid-town Tucson generally, are pretty solidly Democratic.  Did the two partners not know that?  Or were they expecting Republicans from the foothills to drive into town, fight for parking in the West University area, and buy food served in a cup, just to protest Colin Kaepernick? 

To be honest, this whole turn of events strikes me as more than a little strange.  How does a restaurant that was apparently thriving on Thursday close forever on Monday, even after a major faux pas on the part of its owners? 

Maybe the two partners were so far inside the Trump bubble that they didn’t realize that they were antagonizing most of their customers.  But even if that’s the case, once the magnitude of their mistake became clear, surely they had options short of closing.  They could have defended their position and tried to appeal to stray mid-town Republicans as well as apolitical people who just want to eat something from a cup.  Or they could have apologized, made the third partner the public face of the restaurant, and waited to see if the controversy would blow over. 

Instead, they gave up so quickly that it’s hard not to wonder if there’s more to the story than meets the eye.  I hope the local press doesn’t drop this story.