Ron Dicker at HuffPost hailed how Daily Show comedian/activist Trevor Noah served up some "hard truths" on Tuesday night about the extremely impolite behavior anti-police protesters. The headline was "Trevor Noah Nails What’s Being Forgotten Amid Black Lives Matter Restaurant Clashes."
What is this "food for thought"? If you don't like your restaurant table flipped over, then you're not focused enough on black people.
Noah showed video of protesters flipping tables and causing general chaos at a restaurant in Rochester, New York, after the national media arrived on the story of Daniel Prude, who died in March in police custody after having a mental-health episode.
"Guys, no, no, I'm sorry, but no. I'm all for the Black lives Matter movement and fighting against systemic racism and police brutality but it's not acceptable to storm a restaurant and flip over tables,” Noah said. “First, you introduce yourself: ‘Hi, my name is Sean. I’ll be your protester this evening.’ Then you flip over the tables. Manners, people!”
Once he attempted some laughs at the "manners" of scaring restaurant customers and smashing restaurant plates and glasses, the comedian lectured anyone who would complain about this tactic, which does NOT seem like a promising way to win hearts and minds.
NOAH: Jokes aside, we are living through one of the most stressful times in modern history, right? And in order to have any honest conversation, we have to acknowledge everything that's happening. You have a pandemic with people losing their jobs and lives. On top of all that, you have a nation that has been inundated with images of police brutality day in and day out. People are experiencing it all the time....
I think people get more focused on the symptoms than the cause. Because right now everyone is talking about what’s the right way to protest. I think the real question people should be asking is why does there need to be a protest in the first place? Because if I had a magic wand, I wouldn’t be trying to fix protests. I’d use it to get the police to stop brutalizing black people. That’s why the protests are happening. How they're happening is another conversation."
If you had a magic wand, we wouldn't need so-called "comedy" channels to lecture us endlessly about tolerating rioters.
This is how the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle described the scene:
Video footage shows protesters crowding the landing at Swan Dive on Alexander Street. Some cleared tables of people eating outside, causing the diners to get up and leave. A chair was thrown toward the building and a number of protesters can be heard decrying that behavior.
Minutes later, members of the group crossed the street and entered an outdoor seating area at Ox and Stone, where several large groups of diners were seated. Chairs were overturned and glasses were shattered on the tables as protesters motioned for the dining groups to get up and leave….
“I don’t agree with seeing white families sitting out and eating and people running up on them and giving them a hard time,” Narada Riley said. “That’s not going to help the situation at all. But I can’t control the crowd.”
He said he tried to stop the protesters from damaging property at Swan Dive, pointing to the fact that the restaurant had posted on Instagram about providing water and a place to regroup for protesters earlier in the day.
