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This is not the Sarah Huckabee Sanders restaurant that has been invited to leave. (Photo by Dixie D. Vereen for the Washington Post)
On Friday night, the owner of the red hen in Lexington, Virginia, asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her restaurant.
The news broke on Saturday morning, quickly confirmed by Sanders herself:
Although Sanders specified the city where this occurred, the online fire storm quickly engulfed a different red hen about 200 miles away: the unaffiliated restaurant of the same name in the Bloomingdale district. "It was very, very fast with regard to the negative comments that came up in all social media," says Mike Friedman, chief and owner of the district's Red Hen. At the end of the weekend, the backlash included reviews of a star on Yelp and even death threats. The restaurant was also encouraged.
[Review: The Red Hen remains a reliable destination for pasta and more]
Alysa Turner, director of communication for the Red Hen and her partner restaurants, Boundary Stone and All-Purpose, received a Facebook message about the Sanders controversy on Saturday morning. "I asked the guys," Did Sarah come in? "and they said no," she says. Turner has set up messages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram:
This did not stop commentators who, without reading Sanders' original tweet, supposed that she had been to the red chicken in Washington, and castigated the restaurant to ask her to leave. When Turner tried to respond and straighten them out, they assumed that D.C. Red Hen was part of a franchise, not an unrelated place unrelated to the more southwestern location. Turner pointed out that they were not – finally publishing the dictionary definition of "unaffiliated" in the responses on the restaurant's Twitter feed – but that did not stop the deluge from angry comments and bad reviews.
The local red chicken was not the only one to have this problem: The red chicken in Swedesboro, N.J., received "about 600 phone calls," said managing partner Elizabeth Pope at the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Some people called to congratulate us, but most of them threatened us, saying that they were going to burn us or hurt our staff."
Like the comments on the Facebook DC Red Hen and Twitter the flows increased in the hundreds and thousands, Turner continued to try to explain to the commentators that they were attacking the wrong restaurant. "Some people realized their mistake and said," Oh, sorry, "she says." Other people have written "Liar!" or "Well, I'm mad."
A number of Twitter users have asked the Bloomingdale restaurant to announce that Sanders would be welcome if she came there. Turner has attempted to explain that, because of the human rights law, it would be illegal for a restaurant to deny service to anyone because of his political affiliation. ("Everyone who goes through these doors is treated with the same dignity and respect," says Friedman.) That still has not helped.
[Analysis: Did the Red Hen violate Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s rights when it kicked her out?]
In addition to negative tweets and Facebook posts, Turner says the red hen has received "hundreds, if not thousands" of new reviews on platforms such as Yelp, which are sent to her inbox as she goes. their publication. "I would say it's 70-30, a star against five stars." Yelp told Turner that "it takes a few days" to remove the false reviews. She said that Facebook has been "very helpful" to quickly remove false reviews.
Read Matthew C.'s Reviews on The Red Hen on Yelp
Read Carol L.'s Reviews on The Red Hen on Yelp
The problems of the red hen were not limited to the online world, however: Friedman says the restaurant was awake during the weekend and he called the police after receiving phone calls and emails referring to "the future dead hen ". other vague threats. Turner says the police went on Saturday and Sunday nights, although there were no incidents.
Sunday night, "he certainly slowed down," Friedman said. "I thought it was over."
Then the president tweeted on Monday morning.
"It was throwing oil on the fire," says Friedman. Tweets and comments have resumed, "and recent ones have become a bit more extreme."
"It's fascinating, the decay of the truth is happening," he says. "I have to remember after the last 72 hours that we have not done anything wrong.
"But we are dealing with this on a very positive level.We have received a positive and positive response from the community.It's just a weird case of mistaken identity."
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