Culture of something:
The owner of a Denver restaurant who has received death threats after declining a visit by Mitt Romney said Friday that he “could feel the hate in the air” at his business recently.
“On Thursday, it was horrible,” Oscar Aguirre, the owner of Rosa Linda’s Mexican Cafe, told POLITICO. “It was dead. Yesterday during lunch, you could feel the hate in the air.”
Aguirre's crime was that a Romney aide asked if they could hold an official Romney campaign event there, Aguirre said no thanks, and that was that. But that wasn't that, because he then started getting emails, and phone calls, from disgruntled conservatives put out that he would do such a horrible thing.
It hasn't gotten quite as farcical as the ridiculousness that ensued after a Florida pizzeria owner hugged Barack Obama, leading to a nationwide effort by dimwits to give him bad reviews on Yelp, but anything that includes "death threats" is pretty damn bad.
On the other side of things, there was the bakery owner who declined a visit by Joe Biden. It seems like that worked out better, yes?
Back at the bakery, a couple of guys said they'd hoped to see Biden and didn't care that the VP had been turned away.
"I mean it really doesn't matter to me. Everyone has their own views so I love the food here anyway. I agree. Everybody's different so I could care less," said Spenser Critterton of Radford.
… and then Biden's secret service detail bought a bunch of cookies.
Really, folks, it's fine if a small business does not want to host Giant Political Event-Type Thingy. There are many reasons why a business might not want to do such a thing. There are many reasons why they would. If you're getting worked up over that, you may need to consider whether you are investing your political time wisely.