No matter how much they win and get their way, it always seems like the anger and vitriol among those with the most die-hard right-wing views never abates, nor does the misapprehension that they are free to spew bigoted invective without consequences.
For one such conservative woman in Ohio, those assumptions have completely backfired, and it’s an object lesson in the simple fact that while their candidate may have won the election, the majority of the country does not seem to be on their side.
Before you start crying foul, I said what I said: Donald Trump won 49.8% of the vote last November, with Kamala Harris winning 48.3%, for a total of 98.1%. That remaining 1.9% mostly voted for third-party candidates, the majority of which were left-wing protest votes for left-wing candidates like Jill Stein, Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz.
To assume those voters share MAGA sentiments beggars belief, which is probably why we keep hearing stories about so many outspoken conservative voters making public spectacles of their bigotry, seemingly confident they’re in the majority, only to find themselves on the unemployment line. Case in point: an Ohio realtor, whose employer has given her the boot after she left a racist, xenophobic message for a Latino waiter at a Mexican restaurant.
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The incident occurred at Cazuelas Mexican Restaurant & Cantina in Columbus between a waiter named Ricardo and the realtor, whose identity could not be verified by local media. However, photos of her restaurant receipts have been posted online, on which her name is clearly visible, and her employer has confirmed her as an employee.
The receipts show that the realtor wrote “Zero, You Suck” on the tip line, and at the bottom of the receipt, added, “I hope Trump deports you!!!” One wonders why a person would go to a Mexican restaurant if they dislike Latino people this much, but trying to guess the logic of people like this is a fool’s errand.
In any case, the realtor’s message was as stupid as it is bigoted: One of Ricardo’s bosses, Cazuelas marketing director Fabio Oribio, told The Columbus Dispatch that while Ricardo is Latino, he is a natural-born citizen of the United States, an enormous proportion of which used to be Mexico, which predates this country by thousands of years. If you hate America’s Latino heritage this much, you should probably go live in a different country.
Anyway! Oribio said the motive for the realtor’s message isn’t clear, but the woman may have been angry about the restaurant’s one-coupon-per-table rule after she attempted to use two coupons during her visit. Or she could have been disgruntled about wait times as the restaurant was busier than usual. Either way, Oribio said Ricardo has never had a customer service complaint against him.
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After photos of her bigoted message went viral, the realtor’s employer, Century 21 in Canal Winchester, Ohio, was quick to sever ties. “Hate has no place within the CENTURY 21 brand, and we are taking this very seriously,” they wrote in a statement to Columbus’ NBC 4. “After investigating the situation and connecting with the respective broker… we can confirm that this agent is no longer affiliated with the brand.”
Ricardo, on the other hand, has received an outpouring of support from the local community, and on social media. One woman even started a GoFundMe to gift Ricardo with $1000 to “(lift) up Ricardo and (show) him that the community stands with him.” It has raised more than $13,000 as of this writing.
You’d think the fact that even Republican voters in blood-red states like Kansas keep showing up to their congressional representatives’ town halls mad as hell about the new Trump Administration would be a clue to belligerent bigots like this realtor that, even as contentious as things are in our country, we are not in some kind of new era where people can confidently spew discriminatory vitriol without anyway consequences.
You publicly throw a Nazi salute, you tend to get fired. You publicly hurl racist, xenophobic invective at a waiter for no reason, you tend to get fired. How many more of these incidents will need to go viral before these folks get a clue is anyone’s guess, but people like this would do well to think about what this all means. You may have barely squeaked by in an election, but it sure doesn’t seem like you’ve won a country. Watch yourselves.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.