Not since Washington jailed former and future Mayor Marion Barry for crack cocaine possession has the capital city seen such a scandal. On Oct. 23, protesters and city politicians gathered outside a local business to decry a great injustice.
One speaker branded the business full of "racists."
"I am upset, regardless of my previous employment, because it's racist and insensitive to the history of Washington, D.C.," a former employee said about the scandal.
"A storm is coming that you aren't ready for," one rallygoer warned.
One might reasonably assume that something diabolical had transpired to induce such outrage. But this is Washington we're talking about, after all.
The episode started with a publicity stunt that, if all press is good press, is certainly working. Regional pizza chain &pizza recently released a new pastry, dubbed "Marion Berry Knots," after the man who was mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and, after a stint in jail for possessing crack cocaine, again from 1995 to 1999.
"The Marion Berry Knots have enough powdered sugar that will have customers bumping elbows to order and even force the DEA to look twice," promotional materials for the product read. "Our classic knots got a bump," slyly suggests one image with conspicuous piles of powdered sugar in the background.
Heaven forbid brands have a little fun with their marketing. One &pizza location in Southeast Washington was vandalized. Berry's wife called the knots' branding "racist and disrespectful." Even current Mayor Muriel Bowser weighed in: "I hope that business does the right thing and removes those comments."
After just two days of controversy, &pizza caved. "While humor was our intent, it was regrettably off the mark," CEO Mike Burns said in a statement. "The parody of the former Mayor and portrayal of substance abuse was wrong."
All this over Barry, whom writer Matt Labash dubbed "the man universally known as one of the two or three finest crack-smoking politicians our nation has ever produced."
Meanwhile, high school students in Washington are graduating unprepared for college, and "sixty-five percent of Washingtonians say crime is an 'extremely serious' or a 'very serious' problem in the District," the Washington Post reported. Perhaps the district's problems are a little bigger than pizza and pastries.
Nonetheless, Washingtonians are a notoriously sensitive bunch. Just last month, two district natives opened a bar called Political Pattie's, whose facade featured a donkey and an elephant in the spirit of bipartisanship. The husband-and-wife duo Sydney Bradford, a Democrat, and Drew Benbow, a "moderate Republican," tried "putting the 'lit' in politics." Instead, thanks to the thin-skinned denizens of their hometown, they may have lit their money on fire.
The backlash was swift and savage, causing the bar to rebrand its signage merely to "Pattie's," with no troublesome animals in sight. "Soon after our logo was painted on our building's facade, we realized that the representation of the red elephant was hurtful to our community," the bar owners explained in an apology, promising: "Pattie's will continue to strive to do better."
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Humor and bipartisanship are not funny, according to Democrats in the district. But they love a politics-themed drink as long as the joke isn't on them. The Green Zone sold "F*** TRUMP! Punch" in May after former President Donald Trump was found guilty in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Other bars' Trump-targeted drink offerings have included the "When it Arraigns, it Pours" pilsner and "3rd Time's the Charge" cocktail.
Abandon all hope, ye Washington restaurateurs who enter political discourse, or at least remember this: You can easily cash in on distaste for Trump and the GOP. Just don't poke fun at a crack-smoking Democratic mayor or presume to normalize your Republican neighbors.