I don’t always dine at Applebee’s, but when I do, I can never find the fucking salad bar. And I never see anyone who looks like President Obama just trying to fit in with the locals, which is probably a good thing since it appears that not being able to fit in can get you roundhouse-punched with a beer mug, especially if you have the unmitigated gall to do something Kenyan, like speak Swahili in the privacy of your own booth.
Jodie Marie Burchard-Risch, 43, was dining with her husband in an adjacent booth to where Asma Mohammed Jama was sitting with her cousin and children when she became upset because the woman was speaking in Swahili.
“I live in America. I can speak English but we prefer to speak our own language. If it bothers you I’m sorry,” Jama replied to the woman, according to Citizen TV.
.
Authorities say that’s when managers stepped in and tried to get Burchard-Risch to leave, KARE reports.The woman refused to leave and continued to yell at the victim, then threw her drink at the woman.
At that point, she “smashed” her beer mug across the woman’s face in a “round house punch” motion and fled the scene, according to the complaint.
So, this Trump-voter woman was trying to choke down her order of Chipolte Cream Steak & Shrimp with a side of Chicken Wonton Tacos when she became so enraged at the sound of a foreign language that she opened a 17-stitch wound in a stranger’s lower lip.
Here’s her ugly mug.
These folks are always with us.
Oh dear, oh dear. I had almost forgotten about dear Harriett Christian and this brought her back in all her bigoted, PUMAesque glory. Yeah, these types are not going anywhere anytime soon. And I hope Burchard-Risch does some jail time – what she did to that woman is just appalling.
And criminal! Simple assault at the least and if the prosecutor wants, felonious assault with a deadly weapon (depends on how thick and heavy the bear mug was). A good lawyer can have a lawsuit field day with this.
Thinking back to some of the mugs I’ve been served beer in, I’d wonder if the D.A. might be thinking attempted murder charges are in order.
○ Woman who grew up in Kenya attacked in a US restaurant for speaking Swahili | African Voices |
○ Attack on Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI
Oh dear, this one sits very raw with me, Booman. As a 25 year resident of Japan, I have never gotten, “Speak Japanese” from people onboard crowded trains. My English mate, Tim and I ride the same 7:39 train every morning, and generally discuss what goes on at our respective colleges. We are always good about speaking in hushed tones because a lot of our fellow Japanese commuters work long hours, and they need quiet time, and I try not to impinge on that. Occasionally, we notice someone is staring at us, but this often is a case of some fellow who is catching some of what we’re saying. Phrases like, “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t know,” seem to ring a bell with people on the train who are currently brushing up on their English conversational skills.
One would think that an American living in Hiroshima would experience non-stop animosity because of the Atomic Bombing of 1945. Instead, I experience tolerance, and a lot of good cheer.
The idea of an African woman being smashed in the face with a beer mug because of her use of Swahili is utterly disgraceful. America is looking uglier and uglier to expats in my circle of friends who hail from Australia, Canada, England, America, and Ireland. As stated previously, most of us are 20 years or more veterans of Japan, and the idea of honor, (honour) as a societal obligation to try to foster respect for others has seeped in from our Asian years. That’s a good thing. Twenty years ago, if the Brits started in on their American bashing, I would speak up in a bar, and try to persuade them that not all Americans are like Newt Gingrich. That task has become more and more difficult over the years.
I can’t even wrap my brain around the fact that the woman attacked someone for speaking a foreign language. WTF?
I mean, WTF? How in the world does someone get upset because a stranger in the next booth is speaking a foreign language? It’s absolutely none of her business what that other woman is saying, much less in what language she’s speaking.
People are stupid; that’s a given. But this kind of stupid is just horrifying.
It’s a human thing.
The names no small number of tribes/clans/peoples call themselves by, when analyzed, turn out to mean something like “The People”.
Which means those other people aren’t actually, you know, people’.
Difficult to ignore these atavistic impulses. Not everyone masters the trick.
It’s not even 8am yet on this chilly and damp Sunday morning, and thanks to this story of ugliness in America, I have already completed my first shouting of “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” for the day.
The phrase “Only in America” comes to mind, but not in a good way.
It would be in Spanish rather than Swahili, but I keep thinking I should get a bumpersticker that says:
APOYO A LA LIBERTAD DE ESPRESIÓN
Which, if Google Translate is correct, is the Spanish for “I support free speech”.
I am worried that the upcoming political campaigns will continue to put Merica’s darkest side on display. Hopefully, incidents like this will cause folks to stop, take a breath and chill a little; but I’m not going to bet on it.
She should never go to the Grand Canyon. Most visitors are speaking something other than English.
One of the other stories on this online, a Minnesota newspaper’s, noted at the bottom of the story that the assailant had pleaded guilty to an assault charge in 2011. So, yeh, she’s a real prize all right.
Second offense. Good! Means jail time.
Stop blaming this on Trump.
This is who they’ve always been.
I was going to comment about it probably being skin color rather than language, then I saw the picture posted above. She’s quite light for a native Swahili speaker. I had a boss from Nigeria at the P.O. and he was distinctly darker than any of the several hundred or so African-American workers. Come to think of it as a Nigerian immigrant, he was the only one truly describable as “African-American”.
Why can’t it be both?
Applebee’s has a salad bar?
We were at an Apple orchard yesterday and there was a white woman with her two kids there. They liked sort of Nordic, especially their noses but had dark hair and eyes. When called some one on her cell phone, I just wondered what language she was speaking. It wasn’t any Romance language, it wasn’t Germanic, it wasn’t Polish or Russian or Greek. I don’t speak those but I recognize them. Just curiosity and although my wife struck a conversation about apples I couldn’t make myself be rude enough to ask her what language she was speaking (BTW she spoke very good unaccented English, her kids spoke MidWest English). I certainly wasn’t tempted to hit her with a bag of apples or anything else.
I have been upset with speaking foreign languages, but only when their eyes or body language radiated hostility.
Bigot + Alcohol = Violent Scumbag
Hell, I’m not sure how this isn’t a hate crime.
Trump isn’t to blame, but he legitimizes it for a lot of people. The whole, “This is ‘Murrica, speak ‘Murrican” line of reasoning is an easy one to master when you’re a low-IQ drunk bigot.
With Trump grabbing the spotlight, a whole lot of bigots are just screaming through their dog whistles now.
I have been a volunteer adult literacy tutor for immigrants and refugees for many years. Here in Portland, Oregon, the ESL classes in the community colleges are always oversubscribed. Yet when I have talked about my volunteer activities with what I take to be educated people, I invariably hear remarks along the lines of “those immigrants just don’t want to learn English.” Makes no damn difference that I patiently explain the actual state of affairs with ESL classes.
Sigh.
I’m generally resigned to the stupid remarks, but one time I lost it when a lunch companion started complaining about those Mexicans at his gym speaking Spanish, and said, “So, I guess those guys are interfering with your inalienable right to eavesdrop.”
Poor woman! She looks regretful in her picture.
I’d say she looks like she’s sobering up, starting to realize what deep doodoo she’s in, and is feeling terribly, terribly sorry for herself. And it’s all the fault of that damn sand-n***r who refused to speak American!
Don’t kid yourself; anyone who’d do something like that doesn’t regret
one bit of it except having to pay for her actions, and will resolutely deny it’s in any way her fault.
*Well, she might regret wasting all that good beer.
Well, crap; those pesky asterisks did that bolding, not me! it’s not my fault! Waaaaahhhhhhhhh!
A similar incident occurred here a few weeks ago. Thankful there weren’t lasting physical injuries, but the psychological effects will, no doubt, live on for a long time, especially for the victim’s 9 yo daughter. Excessive alcohol consumption seems to be a factor in many of these incidents.