St. Louis CofCC Blog

Okay, maybe he’s not literally, but it won’t be much longer until Joe Vento is.  Nevertheless, the city’s human rights tribunal, the one that wanted to burn him at the stake for his “Please Speak English” signs in his restaurant, decided yesterday to put away their straws and matches.

Evidently, running your own restaurant in the way that you want, and establishing that orders for cheese steaks should be placed in English, is not a “human right” in Philadelphia.  Seems to me that the city has much more grave concerns.

“He” is State Rep. Rodney Hubbard (D-St. Louis City), who had lunch at Johnny’s in Soulard yesterday afternoon.  According to him, two drunken white men approached him and angrily told him that he was in a “white bar.”  “She” is one of two women on staff and Johnny’s who testified that nobody directed any racial comments at anybody.

Since it’s purely a matter of he said she said, the book is far from closed on the matter.  It could be that this is all a hoax on Rep. Hubbard’s part; this blogmeister remembers that his name was brought up in a scandal that broke last year, though I can’t remember exactly what the scandal was about.  Perhaps he’s trying to razzle-dazzle St. Louis.  On the other hand, the two staff members work for Johnny’s, and they could be lying to protect their boss and their jobs.  Even if Hubbard is telling the truth, it’s not as if there were any threats of violence or racial pejoratives used.

Try being white and walking into a majority black watering hole in north city or north county, and see how long it takes for racial statements to come your way from someone in the bar.

Post-Dispatch columnist Sylvester Brown, whom this blogmeister met in a two-hour setting many years ago while he was still writing for a black newspaper in town, gave your St. Louis Metro Area CofCC some love today:

At any rate, the local-control issue might get ugly. Wiegert’s group is rallying support to convince Jefferson City legislators to kill the bill. Members with the St. Louis City Republican Central Committee and the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens have voiced concerns similar to Wiegert’s and are supporting his association. [Link added]

“Wiegert” refers to Gary Wiegert, whom this blogmeister described as the “former” SLPOA President several days ago, but who is apparently now the President once again.  He was a guest on KMOX this afternoon (and also Sylvester Brown’s column confirms it) that the City will be able to raid the SLPD Officers’ Pension and Disability Fund should they get control of the PD.  Wiegert, while he was a host on WGNU, made a point of telling us that the SLPD Pension Fund was well-run, and had many pretty pennies stashed away, and city politicians have been salivating like dogs around a dinner table to get their mitts on that money and spend it on one thing or another.