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Yielding For Bacon [Critics]: Vermont Diner Takes Down Sign After Woman Objects To The Reference To Bacon

Screen Shot 2014-08-26 at 9.04.11 AMThere is an interesting controversy out of Winooski, Vermont over a sign for Sneakers diner. As part of a city program, Sneakers helped beautify its street with flower beds and in return was allowed to put up a sign. The diner featured its favorite dish with a sign that read: “Yield For Sneakers Bacon.” However, a Muslim woman who was also a vegan objected that a sign with the word bacon was offensive to her due to her religion’s ban on eating pork products. The diner responded by immediately taking down the sign and personally apologizing to the woman. That accommodation has led to a backlash from others who feel that the diner is yielding to ultra-sensitive individuals and encouraging such demands from others who may be offended by any number of food references and dishes.

The woman who described herself as “a vegan and a member of a Muslim household” made a complaint that called the sign offensive and that led owner Sneakers owner Marc Dysinger to take the corrective action.

It is not clear if the objection was motivated by the woman being a vegan or a Muslim. Regardless of whether this objection was from the perspective of a Muslim or a vegan or a Muslim vegan, there remains the question of whether there can be too much accommodation of such views. While tolerance is greatly (and correctly) valued in our society, there is a countervailing concern over a type of self-censorship where words and signs are increasingly eliminated to satisfy every sensitive group or individual. On a large scale, the Redskins debate has focused on this issue when a board ruled that it did not matter if a small group found a name offensive to be stripped of its trademark protections. The question is whether, despite our desire to protect values of pluralism and tolerance, we also have to protect pluralism in free speech and to resist pressure for common denominators in messages that remove every term or phrase deemed offensive to someone. There is a tendency in a tolerant society to say simply “well, what is the problem? If something hurts someone’s feelings, just change it.” However, in our world of mass communications and messaging, most messages could be deemed to have offensive elements. It requires judgment and certainly creates the danger that you will be viewed as intolerant. However, a reference to bacon — even “yielding” to bacon — would seem to all into a category of unoffensive speech by any objective standard.

This is obviously just a single small sign of a small diner in a small town. However, it is an interesting context to explore the limits of accommodation in speech and the dangers that it presents to the free exchange of ideas, tastes, and viewpoints. We have seen a comprehensive crackdown on the West on free speech under some laws combating hate speech, discriminatory speech, and even disruptive speech. While the first amendment only deals with government action, we have to be concerned about the chilling effect of private action over speech. For example, we have discussed the controversy involving Yale University Press. 413hBzCMe0L._SL500_AA240_In a shocking decision, Yale University Press published Jytte Klausen’s “The Cartoons That Shook the World” (on the cartoons that led to riots and over 200 killed in protests worldwide). However, Yale removed the the 12 cartoons from the book so not to insult Muslims. Thus, you could read the book but not actually see the cartoons themselves. It was a decision by Yale University Press that is still discussed as anti-intellectual and cowardly in academic circles.

It is unclear how this person in Vermont goes through life surrounded by pictures of pork, including advertisements. The appearance left by these stories is someone who sees bacon in a sign that then stews (presumably vegan stew) for hours and days over the reference. A better lesson for her might have been for the owner to politely say that the sign was not meant to insult her but that she should consider whether she is overly sensitive as a person living in a pluralistic society with many different views and tastes. Tolerance includes the ability to walk through society and understand that you will be exposed to the expression of many things that you might not like. However, we protect your right to live your life as you choose. That does not grant the additional expectation that others will conform to your preferences in their own speech or expressions. It is hard to say that the diner should not have taken down the sign since it seemed to care little about the content of the sign. Yet, the action reinforces a view that businesses and people should yield to such objections regardless of their objective merit.

We cannot have a society where terms, words, and expressions are banished by any objection of any group. That course will drain away the vitality, diversity, and spontaneity of speech in our society. It requires not an act of intolerance but a commitment that there must be tolerance of speech and images in a pluralistic society.

What do you think?

Source: WPTZ

189 thoughts on “Yielding For Bacon [Critics]: Vermont Diner Takes Down Sign After Woman Objects To The Reference To Bacon”

  2. With a few notable exceptions, while reading this thread one would assume that most Americans hate any display of kindness, most especially if that kindness is offered to a Muslim

    I guess that’s just good old American Christian love. Makes ya proud, doesn’t it.

  3. Karen S.,

    Glad Darren dug that out. Nice post. I still think it stunk that the guys who most deserved a drink, our Dough-boys, were out of the loop and in the trenches while the 18th was being put through.

    1. “. I still think it stunk that the guys who most deserved a drink, our Dough-boys, were out of the loop and in the trenches while the 18th was being put through.”
      ~+~
      And then decades later, the federal government forced the states to adopt a 21 year drinking age, but we still sent young men and women off to wars. Funny how they can be responsible for handling weapons up to nukes but by God don’t let them have a can of beer. 19 year old men can die for their country but they cannot raise their champagne to toast the US.

      At least we passed the 26th Amendment.

      1. Darren – the drinking age had been 21 but with the draft taking 18 year olds, the argument that “If they are old enough to fight, they are old enough to drink” was used to lower the drinking age in many states. Then the deaths by traffic fatalities went up.

  4. “PC is pernicious and must be stopped by any means necessary. We see so many people who love to play victim and people jump through hoops. We got a contingent of that ilk here, and they’ll be here soon!”
    Oh, was bound to happen sometimes, agreed with Nick on something! At least first part of his post! Second part too matter of fact as he proves latter that he meant himself among those of that ilk!

  5. “…that’s what we women did with suffrage – immediately vote for Prohibition. Although the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) preceded the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote), women were a massive force…”

    And now, in the year of our Lord, 2014, we know, and it is painfully clear, why the Founders created a restricted vote republic.

  6. Her request may have been inappropriate, but it’s never inappropriate to be respectful in return.

  7. Bacon isn’t good for you but I’m sure you don’t care. Eating any pork requires more energy to digest than it gives in return. With the sign up, I’d probably pass on Sneakers. However, since they were nice enough to voluntarily take the sign down b/c someone asked them to, I’ll remember Sneakers the next time I’m in Winooski and I’ll stop in for a veggie salad.

  9. fiver:

    Actually, that’s what we women did with suffrage – immediately vote for Prohibition. Although the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) preceded the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote), women were a massive force behind Prohibition. Statistically, they cared more about Prohibition than they did about the vote, on the order of 10 to 1. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was the biggest political organization of women of all time.

    Why did women care so much about Prohibition, a nanny state law?

    Because in those times, women were basically powerless. Divorce was difficult and rare. There were few job opportunities. If a woman was unlucky enough (or foolish enough) to marry an alcoholic man, she faced far higher rates of poverty and domestic abuse.

    The WCTU blamed alcohol for all the ills of the world. So passionately did they care about prohibiting alcohol that it galvanized them to get the vote.

    For comparison, Florida’s suffrage organization had only 20 members in the entire state, almost half of them men.

  11. “PC is an assault on our freedom of speech…”

    Silly nonsense. Say anything you want. You have that freedom. But people are not required to give you a tummy rub for it. Speech invites criticism. That criticism is also speech and may itself be criticized… by more speech. And so on, and so on…

    See how that works?

    For example:

    First person says: I hate PC; it’s unfair, and it stops me from speaking freely.

    Second person responds: That’s because your statements often reveal you to be an ill-informed bigot and, well, kinda stupid. Your assertions are generally so logically weak and factually flawed that they wither in the face of even the most mild criticism.

    First person replies: I quit. Todd, get Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper. We’re going back to Wasilla.

    [sound of Ferragamo heels stomping away through the mud]

    1. fiver, as you point out, nothing is wrong when all is left in the realm of speech. The problem happens when they incorporate Political Correctness into policies and laws. When a student is suspended from school for saying “bless you” to a student who sneezes, or when a principal and athletic director face criminal charges with jail time for saying a prayer of thanks for lunch, when someone is arrested for reading from the book of Leviticus about how homosexuals should be executed, or when someone is banned from Great Britain because of a sticker that communicates no homos, when a baker faces a lawsuit for declining to bake a cake celebrating a gay marriage, when a florist is sued for not providing flowers for a gay wedding, when boys are suspended for wearing a t-shirt with a gun or for pointing his finger like a gun, when pro-life activists are stopped from showing images of aborted fetuses, when a Ten Commandments monument is court ordered to be put into a closet because it is deemed offensive to people, then we have a problem with our understanding of allowable speech. When one person’s speech is considered a legally protected class of speech, such as speech supportive of gay rights, and another person’s speech is prosecuted as hate speech, such as those who embrace a standard of sexual morality, then we have a problem of inequality that needs to be fixed.

  12. You can get stalked on Twitter and all social media so always be aware of that as well. It is overall a positive, but there are a lotta angry, mean and nasty people out there.

  13. Twitter is a good way to see how all types of people think. There was a montage of Robin Williams on the Emmy’s last night. There was a short improve where Robin took a scarf from a woman in the audience and started riffing. One of his riffs was him putting the scarf over his face like a burka and saying, “I’m from Iran, help me.” Well, the PC people are out, calling Williams a bigot, racist, Islamaphobe, and worse. Incredible what we have come to in this country. PC is an assault on our freedom of speech and it must be stopped.

    On a positive note, Breaking Bad swept the awards as it deserved.

  14. why is there always ONE poster on the board who feels they are right and everyone else is wrong ? and then they keep on at the very same people. i guess the saying misery loves company is very much alive and true for at least ONE poster who claims to know it all..

    as for the sign the owner should have told her to pull her flipping burka above her eyes when passing by. the sign seeing as how thanks to sharia law women shouldnt know how to read anyway. something tells me this is a set up. if you listen to the fanatics women arent allowed to be out alone, speak to any men outside of family, and this is the first time in 47 yrs ive heard of a vegan muslim. something smells with this whole story. and it isnt the bacon

  17. Its not fried chicken daddy, its Shake N Bake. Now. Here is the deal I would cut with the Muslim itchBay who does not want my restaurant to serve bacon or put bacon on a sign. When she arrives at the restaurant she must have the head scarf on the top of the head and the veil across the ugly puss. We will seat here at a Muslim table and have a waiter dressed like an Imam wait on her and her husband. We will feed them raw snake. They can drink what they want. But if the ugly itchBay takes off the veil then she has to go out.

  20. At least I got the topic away from guns. It’s like heeding cats. MikeA made the thoughtful and bold comment here. It deserves some discussion. MikeA is an intellectually honest progressive. Some of you folks should ask him questions and take notes. Your lack of depth and curiosity is depressing.

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