Fortune Favors The Bold

Since we know Abe Sauer has his best horse deliver his Google Alerts right to him in the barn, I’ll type an adult response to his article

If you think that NYC meal discounts for veterans on Veterans’ Day are important to the troops, then it’s perfectly reasonable to raise awareness of the issue. For one thing, I think it’s a very good policy, on behalf of a restaurant, to have some sort of veterans’ special. It’s good PR and not terribly expensive. 

It’s not reasonable to argue that all restaurants should be forced to do that. And if we think troops should have more economic benefits for their service, we should pay them more.

It doesn’t really do anything to offer veteran discounts in Manhattan, because there commonly aren’t any servicemen here. The closest Army base is miles away, might as well be on another continent. I know one servicemember of the Marines who lives in Williamsburg… with his parents.  

Fleet Week is the exception. When there are HUNDREDS of specials.

Virtually all of the chain restaurants in New York (including those hideous Riese-owned restaurants, as mentioned in the comments by Krugmatic Depressive) do not honor the promotional prices set nationally for the franchises. This includes promotional discounts. If something is on the “99 cent” menu, here it often costs $1.49. 

So let’s get to the meat of this:

Abe’s character insinuations about “coastal elites” are off-base and obsessive. Abe is no better than Sarah Fucking Palin in that regard. The claims of “coastal elitism” are just another form of elitism. More “us vs. them” ignorant bullshit to get a self-serving point across. In his world, we are all morally inferior to each of the “heroic” working poor people in the flyover states (many of whom may not be among the “elite” because - SHOCKER - they haven’t earned it). He talks about the “issues” facing low-income, economically depressed people who live in North Dakota as if they are proof that New Yorkers are monsters in comparison, monsters for letting it happen, monsters for doing whatever it is that we do to make their lives unworkable. Where do I start dismantling that line of thinking? I trust you all to be smart enough to not need a recitation of its faults. Meanwhile, how is it so disgraceful to be part of a dynamic, productive society? I could pull your fucking plow, Abe, I just took on a different line of work. Have some goddamn respect for that. 

And there’s no valor in holding the fort in North Dakota, either. Your America is not any better than my America. FYI, this TGI Fridays chain that offers those veterans discounts everywhere but in Union Square? FOUNDED IN NEW YORK, MOTHERFUCKER. You’re welcome, Rosie the Riveter. And you know why we don’t approve of TGI Fridays anymore? Because unlike most of the restaurants here (whose kitchens are run by people who also make $1700 a month), a while back they went corporate and started making all their food in the microwave or deep fryer, which made them suck. That didn’t happen on our watch. Yes, we have trendy restaurants here. Virtually all of them were started by small business owners who weren’t rich when they started. A lot of them were from poor immigrant families. They worked hard and made it. They’re not whining about the lost dairy farm in Guangzhou and making judgments about people who enjoy their lives. Think about what they might say about the problems in Real America before you write your next thinly-veiled swipe at the cities and suburbs that contain far more people than the select group of executive-class assholes who have ruined your life. 

But we can come together on the one thing we have in common: Neither of us know how to self-edit. We can start from there and build a new nation on that. A nation free of executive-class assholes. But with many pork buns.