Music

Tom Morello is beefing with a small Seattle restaurant

by Tyler Munro

Tom Morello has spent so much of his career on a high horse that we’d expect him to walk around carrying a saddle. But all jokes aside, the Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and E Street guitarist has so much of his time of late pontificating for the people, that it’s almost hard to remember what his guitar playing sounds like—hint: very silly.

Most notably, he’s gotten into a bit of a spat with a small restaurant in Seattle. There are two sides of the story. Unfortunately for Morello, they both make him look like a total dink.

It started on Saturday when, in the middle of the night, Morello took to Twitter to call Five Point restaurant “the WORST,” telling his fans to spread the word about the “rude & anti-worker” establishment.

Naturally, owner David Meinert didn’t take too kindly to this. In his lengthy response to Morello, he wrote that it was unfair for the human equivalent of a Che Guevara poster to attack a small business without knowing anything about it. He went onto say that rockstars don’t get special treatment at his restaurant, and that acting like a prick will get you treated like one, adding that his restaurant is “totally pro-worker.”

Here, some context is needed. Morello was out campaigning on behalf of 15 Now, a grassroots initiative that’s fighting to raise the minimum wage in Washington and across the United States. It’s an admirable cause, but one that’s far from black and white. It also holds no bearing on what happened at Five Point.

In his long response to “Pancake Gate,” Morello wrote that his party was hungry enough to try and get a restaurant he claimed to know was “on the wrong side of the minimum wage issue.” When he arrived, the diner was at capacity, but when 10 people left, Morello was aghast to find his party of 6 was still not allowed in. And that’s when the rockstar tactics started.

Confronting the doorman, Morello admits to pulling the “don’t you know who I am?” card, saying that he asked to see the manager.

Holy obnoxious. Not that you’d expect anything less from a Seahawks fan. Still, Morello seems oblivious as ever as to why someone might not give two hairs about his politicking.

First, the $15 minimum wage? It’s a great idea. But as one Redditor points out, the hike is a redistribution of funds—that money has to come from somewhere—and one that small business owners likely cannot afford to implement at the flip of a switch.

Oh, and that doorman? What if he makes more than $15? What if he loves his job? What if he hates Rage Against the Machine?

It’s admirable that Tom Morello has come out to defend himself, much like it’s cute that he fails to realize how much worse it makes him look. In his response, he paints the doorman as a potential racist, joking that he might be “anti-Kenyan,” in reference to a member of his party, which is nauseating. He writes self-deprecating jokes about the Spin Doctors, which is pointless and patronizing. In fact, it’s not until the end of his rambling that he gets to the point.

“Next time we’ll call ahead,” he says in closing.

Yeah.

Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to rally your hyper-impressionable fans against a seemingly innocent small business?