-By Warner Todd Huston
One story that no one seems to be talking much about is the violent attack on an African American small businessman’s hot dog vending stand perpetrated by criminal union thugs during Monday’s right-to-work fracas in Lansing, Michigan.
Clint Tarver set up his stand near the Americans for Prosperity tent that union goons later tore down and, at least initially, Mr. Tarver reported that things were “going real well,” until the union toughs got into their woefully common criminal behavior.
Tarver was not just selling his hotdogs to the AFP folks but to anyone that wanted a snack. But it wasn’t long before the union members began to taunt him, even calling him a “n*gger,” calling him an “Uncle Tom,” and accusing him of being “on the wrong side.”
“They were yelling ‘Uncle Tom,’ and ‘You on the wrong side!'” Tarver said yesterday, recounting the incidents as he described the day’s events. “I kept telling them ‘I’m here to sell hot dogs.’ That’s when they told me I’m on the wrong side. I said ‘I’m not on any side.'”
Mr. Tarver didn’t just show up at the capital on a whim, either. His hotdog stand is a popular warm-weather feature for capital goers. His stand has been a fixture outside the capital at Lansing for over a decade.
On Monday, Tarver had some of his catering equipment inside a tent when just after 11AM “things turned ugly.”
Tarver said as thugs began tearing down the tent, other men — to whom he had served hot dogs — came inside and began turning over tables and wrecking his equipment. Tarver said two of the men wore masks — one a devil’s mask and the other a ski mask.
“I gave them hot dogs (earlier) because they had tickets,” Tarver said, adding that the masked men were friendly and took the hot dogs, but within a few minutes were destroying his equipment.
“These guys five minutes later were turning over the coffee table. He put his mask back on
and next thing I know they was turning over the table,” Tarver said.
“They just kept on going. They weren’t men,” Tarver said frustrated as he tried to describe the hate and violence he experienced.
This African American small businessman had his livelihood destroyed by union thugs. And why? Because he happened to serve a hotdog to the AFP folks? That was enough reason for these union goons to attack him?
Now, imagine if this had happened to an African American at a Tea Party event. The Old Media establishment would have made a hero of a Clint Tarver. He’d be on every newscast, every network, every radio show, in every newspaper and on the cover of every magazine as a symbol of the hate conservatives have for “America.”
But because he might be able to be linked to a conservative group no matter how tangentially and because it was union thugs that perpetrated the racist, violent attack on the man, the Old Media ignores Mr. Tarver’s story.
Here is a little news piece made last April about Mr. Tarver’s hot dog business, showing how many of Lansing’s denizens know and love him and his small business.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.