GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Intersectional Bookstore Comes to a Dead End.
One piece of merchandise carried a label that read “Trigger warning: gendered and patriarchal language.” The offending verbiage? Instructions for using a feminine-hygiene product.
I attempted to make a small purchase but didn’t have any cash. A sign at the counter declared: “Due to patriarchy we require a $5 minimum on all debit/credit card purchases.” I left empty-handed. A few weeks later, the store announced it was closing: “Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism cannot be reformed and ever serve the people. Abolition is the goal.” The final statement doesn’t mention women.
Last Monday, University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson came to Portland as part of his tour to promote “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.” Some 50 protesters stood outside the theater accusing him of “transphobia” and misogyny. Their signs—one of them read “infinite genders”—reminded me of the bookstore. One protester told me she was shocked that so many women came to hear Mr. Peterson speak: “It’s just disgusting!” Sure enough, inside were many women, including women of color.
Mr. Peterson has 12 rules, compared with In Other Words’ seven. Perhaps the bookstore would have survived if it had followed Mr. Peterson’s Rule No. 6: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”
Heh. Read the whole thing.
(Via David Thompson.)
Elsewhere in the intersection of bookstores and the angry left, “Bookstore owner calls police after customer confronted Steve Bannon:”
A Richmond, Va., bookstore owner said he called the police on Saturday after former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon was confronted in his store.
Nick Cooke, owner of Black Swan Books, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that a woman called Bannon a “piece of trash.”
The woman then left the store after Cooke said he called 911.
“Steve Bannon was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business. I asked her to leave, and she wouldn’t. And I said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t,’ and I went to call the police and she left,” Cooke said. “And that’s the end of the story.”
Bannon grew up in Richmond, the newspaper noted.
The Richmond Police Department confirmed the call was made but the call was canceled before officers responded.
“We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening,” Cooke said.
Bannon joins a growing list of political figures associated with President Trump who have been confronted in public in recent weeks.
Naturally in response to a bookstore owner trying to create a safe space for all of his customers, Philippe Reines, the Hillary Clinton staffer who stood in for Trump during Hillary’s debate prep, tweeted out the owner’s name, the store’s physical and email address and its phone number, in order to sic the leftwing outrage mob on the store.