Well, if it ain’t “fake news,” it’s news so vanishingly inconsequential as to be close. But, hey, “This is CNN.”
The third place cable news network has a web story up on CNN Money hyping “sanctuary restaurants.” According to CNN’s Octavio Blanco:
To help protect [illegal alien] workers, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (also known as ROC United), a national advocacy group for restaurant workers, has teamed up with restaurant owners across the U.S. to form the sanctuary restaurant movement.
So far, 285 restaurants across the U.S. have signed on, pledging to create safe and equitable work environments, where no one is discriminated against and everyone is paid a fair wage, offered benefits and given opportunities for professional growth.
Gosh, that sure sounds like dishwashing utopia. And it may as well be utopia in the actual sense of the word. There are 616,000 restaurants in America. CNN finds it newsworthy that 285 of them – .046% -- have pledged to run an extreme hippie fantasy camp for unskilled labor. (You can bet an inordinate number of these joints are vegan.) A CNN tweet plublicizing the story actually said “285 restaurants across the US” had joined. Heck, there are probably 285 restaurants in any three-block radius in Manhattan, not counting hot dog carts.
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
If, as a chart in the article maintains, the restaurant industry employs 1.1 million “undocumented workers,” each of those 285 restaurants would have to have north of 1500 people just to protect half the illegal workforce. That’s a lot of bar backs, and not even a place with “Communitarian” in the name can afford that much virtue signaling. But every little bit … think globally, act locally … visualize locally sourced, organic whirled peas, etc.
As Blanco notes, “The Sanctuary Restaurants website notes that the label is not a legal designation and can't protect workers or restaurants against any actions taken by immigration and customs agents.”
In other words, sanctuary restaurants are like any good liberal endeavor: more about making liberals feel good than bringing actual concrete results. And Blanco’s piece – like any good CNN report – is more about making an activist reporter feel good than bringing you any actual news.
