This week, The Washington Post editorial board made the remarkable decision to issue an op-ed scolding a 26-seat farm-to-table restaurant in rural Virginia for refusing service to a customer who made the staff uncomfortable. That restaurant, as most sentient political observers know by now, was the Red Hen in Lexington, VA and that customer was Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen, politely asked Sanders to step out on the patio so that she could tell her discreetly that her presence upset the staff and then comped her group’s check. It was not a “leftist mob” as detractors claim, but an altogether civil ejection.

The editorial board made a simpering plea to “let the Trump team eat in peace,” warning about the degradation of norms and and the justification of “incivility” in a “special moment.” “How hard is it to imagine...people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”

If this is the intellectual might and moral courage that stands between democracy and darkness, we’re fucking screwed.

Never mind that the anti-abortion movement has a long history of activism far more sinister, intrusive, and violent than quietly asking a customer to dine elsewhere. (If the WaPo editorial board would like to brush up on the fates of Dr. David Gunn, Dr. George Tiller, and so many others, The New York Times has a brief history on deadly attacks on abortion providers.) That aside, restaurant owners routinely deny service to obnoxious Yelpers, noisy children, and even critical restaurant reviewers—this is the norm. These are not protected classes, which include race, religion, disability, and gender, under anti-discrimination laws. Just as posting a “no shirts, no shoes, no service” sign is not equivalent to Jim Crow-era “white-only” policies—there is a wide chasm between bad behavior and immutable characteristics. The late celebrated food writer Josh Ozersky received a lifetime ban from the popular Momofuku restaurant group for blogging indiscreetly about information the owner, David Chang, considered off-the-record. There were no cries of incivility. Ozersky violated that restaurant’s particular code of ethics and was no longer welcome. C’est la vie.

Almost every reputable restaurant in America maintains a blacklist of customers too odious to be seated among polite company—and the entire Trump administration should be on every last one of them.

Blacklisting is not something restaurateurs take lightly. As Wilkinson explained in The Washington Post’s very own pages, the restaurant had maintained a politically neutral stance for a decade and she was concerned about the repercussions in the pro-Trump town. But her staff was so disturbed by the presence of Sanders—whose defense of the transgender ban in the military and family separation policy of immigrants took a deeply personal toll—that the chef called her on her day off. “I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.” To Wilkinson, what made the difference was that this was not a private citizen, but a public official, one who defended “an inhumane and unethical” administration’s vicious policies.

Wilkinson’s recognition of the costs of a principled stance were soon realized. Sanders used her official government Twitter account, instead of her personal one, to criticize the small private business—an ethics violation—and, later in a press conference, described the episode of being politely asked to leave the restaurant as “harm.” Trump jumped in, tweeting that the restaurant was “filthy” and claimed that he “always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!” Hordes of Trump followers targeted a different restaurant, Red Hen in DC, for days of harassment, including death threats and egging. The Washington establishment piled on the small restaurant and its seven-person staff, with an array of misguided commentary. In a now-deleted tweet, Politico’s Jake Sherman, last seen obsequiously defending the administration by decrying Michelle Wolf’s stand-up as “mean,” sided with the president, tweeting “kind of agree on the outside/inside dirtiness deal.” David Axelrod, CNN commentator and former Obama staffer, sarcastically noted: “Oh yes. Let’s get REALLY tough and deprive the Trumpies Chanterelle & Scape Risotto! That will change EVERYTHING!” Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush, snickered: "I guess we're heading into an America with Democrat-only restaurants, which will lead to Republican-only restaurants." None, mind you, peeped up when Vice President Joe Biden was turned away by a Virginia cookie shop in 2012.

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But it was Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, who made the most revolting claim, commenting on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Sanders’s ejection “violates the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Hass believes that our press secretary’s suffering in not finishing her free cheese plate is on the same moral plane as black Americans, in the Jim Crow era, getting murdered, beaten and attacked by police dogs for seeking equal rights. More devoted to order than to justice, he makes for a fine modern embodiment of the white moderate described in Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.