Cooked up by the New York Times and served by the Bo$ton Globe.
Enjoy!
"The Battle Over Biscuits and Gravy at the 11-Worth Cafe" by By Dionne Searcey, New York Times, September 5, 2020
Omaha’s 11-Worth Cafe served standard American breakfast fare of omelets, hash browns, bacon and eggs and, without much notice until June, a dish called the Robert E. Lee: two sausage patties smooshed between biscuits and smothered in gravy.
That was before the summer. Before George Floyd was killed and Jacob Blake was shot, and thousands of people marched against police brutality down city streets across America. Before protesters were fatally shot in Kenosha, Wis., Austin, Texas, and right there in Omaha. Before people demanding change in one of the largest cities in the Midwest set their sights on the biscuits and gravy on the menu at the 11-Worth cafe.
To some in Omaha, the name of a biscuits and gravy dish was something they never noticed, or a fitting homage to the past. Getting rid of it, they thought, was succumbing to the same “cancel culture” President Trump frequently rails against. In the past few months, they say their city, with its cul-de-sac friendliness, and claim to creating butter-brickle ice cream, seems unrecognizable to them.
To others, especially Black residents, the biscuit name was another reminder that the city’s history includes the 1919 lynching of a Black man that drew thousands of spectators and a Ku Klux Klan attack on Malcolm X’s North Omaha family home. History that was never something they could ignore.
“There’s so much hate behind it, so much hurt,” said Precious McKesson, a community activist in Omaha and the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party’s Black caucus. “We have to stop normalizing hate and giving people a platform to normalize hate.”
Across the country statues are falling and flags are coming down, but America’s history of racism is also woven into the streets people drive on, the schools they send their kids to and, in Omaha, the biscuits and gravy they like to order at a downtown breakfast spot that, after talks with protesters broke down, has now closed its doors.
The 11-Worth Cafe takes its name from its location on Leavenworth Street, a thoroughfare that honors a war general who battled Native Americans in the 1800s. It was popular with a range of clientele — men and women in motorcycle jackets, hospital workers getting off the night shift, musicians nursing hangovers, seniors lingering over a crossword puzzle, local politicians looking to glad-hand regular folks. The décor was heavy on ceramic chicken knickknacks. Diners waiting for a table got free coffee. Kids got balloons.
“Everything you ordered there, eggs scrambled or poached, it came out exactly as you ordered it. You never had to send anything back,” said Allen Thomsen, a local customer. “Plain old, good Midwestern food.”
Apart from the Robert E. Lee, the “Working Man’s breakfast” was the only other named meal on the menu. Customers couldn’t recall how the general wound up amid the breakfast fare — it was just always there — though some Civil War buffs say Lee enjoyed a mid-1800s version of the biscuits and gravy dish. Diners who ordered the meal could choose between country sausage gravy and creamy country gravy. The starting price was $7.49, and customers could get extra gravy in frozen, reheatable pouches to go.
Thomsen, who is white, barely recalled seeing the name of Robert E. Lee alongside the dish. In any case, he said, it never bothered him.
“He just happened to be on that side of the battlefield,” Thomsen said. “There were certainly Union people that did bad things.”
The demonstrators weren’t harmed by the Lee biscuits, he argued, but now with the cafe’s closure, servers are out of work, diners lost an affordable place to eat — all during a pandemic that already has hurt the economy.
The Facebook post came as Omaha was erupting in protests over Floyd’s death. It was from the account of Tony Caniglia, the son of the cafe’s owner who shares his name and cooks at the 11-Worth.
“Get rid of the rubber bullets and it’s time to go lethal,” read the post. “I promise you that when that first body hits the ground, reality will set in for 95 percent of the rioters and you can use the other 5 percent as target practice.”
The post, which has since been deleted, drew wider attention after Jacob Gardner, a white bar owner, fatally shot James Scurlock, a 22-year-old Black protester, in the middle of protests downtown.
Blurry video footage shows Gardner backing up and pointing a gun after two people tackled him in the street not far from the two bars he owns. Gardner shot into the air twice. Scurlock jumped on his back and Gardner shot him in the clavicle, killing him.
Gardner, 38, was released without charges filed against him, with prosecutors saying he had acted in self-defense. Demonstrations broke out and a special prosecutor was appointed with a grand jury convening this week.
The killing of Scurlock added urgency for protesters who had already scheduled a rally on the grounds of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation in North Omaha.
The Facebook posts from Caniglia, who is white, drew outrage, with protesters quickly connecting him to the 11-Worth Cafe and then to the biscuits and gravy. They decided to gather in front of the diner on a Saturday morning to demonstrate.
Caniglia did not respond to requests for comment, nor did his father, Tony Caniglia Jr., who appealed to customers online that the Facebook comments were not made by him, according to The Omaha World-Herald.
About 75 protesters gathered outside the cafe that Saturday, yelling “Black Lives Matter!” and “Shut it down!” Police officers showed up, escorting diners from the restaurant past jeering demonstrators, who returned the next day.
The 11-Worth operated for more than 40 years until a few days after the protests in June, when a note appeared on the door to the darkened diner: “Closed.”
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I didn't finish it, and as you can see I didn't even touch what they served.
The Globe is keeping a close eye on you:
"Like never before in history, surveillance technologies from geolocation to data analytics to facial recognition are being used by companies and governments to track the behavior of communities and citizens, but in 2020, we’re also witnessing the power of smartphones and other tools for citizens to hold government accountable and as aids in tracking and tracing the spread of coronavirus. Is it possible for surveillance technologies to do more good than harm? Or are the technologies and the terms of our society too fraught to unleash the good without the evil? What kind of social contract do we need to get the best out of technologies? Globe editorial page editor Bina Venkataraman, author and technologist William Powers, and Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project of the ACLU of Massachusetts, discuss the technologies that watch over us."
Did you see the where the link came from?
The Globe is working glove in hand for that genocidal maniac.
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The New York Times was the mouthpiece, and the Globe says he is going to win in a landslide because that's the only way we will accept his victory.
Meanwhile, AP covered the Trump campaign:
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What do they expect when it is the Wa$hington Compo$t counting the votes?
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It's the New York Times pushing Strzok's book!
Strike three!
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They are in the "door-knocking phase" just as COVID again rises, so don't open the door!
Hey, it's just a job, right?
"A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to stop detaining unaccompanied immigrant children in hotels. That allows for expelling them without the chance to seek refuge in the United States, a new policy the government has enacted during the coronavirus pandemic....."
What is strange is Trump is doing better with Latinos as the military turns on him and the Globe pushes for wars with China and Russia, complete with bomb craters and blown up pipelines just like they did in Lebanon, where the only thing left for the savages to eat is whale meat as they mourn the sick and the dead in Maine.
I think I will skip the drive-in movie the New York Times is showing.
