Check My ID Or I, Todd Blanche, Will Unleash The Wrath Of The United States Government On Your Restaurant
I will come down on you like Zeus himself.
Hi, reservation for two under the name Todd Blanche. Here’s my driver’s license.
What? Why isn’t it necessary?
You don’t do that here? No, that can’t be right. I always show a picture ID when I enter a restaurant. How else are you supposed to know that I’m really the same Todd Blanche who made the reservation? What if I’m some imposter who had an intense craving for Cocina Mexicana’s tableside guac, but you were all booked up, so I figured I’d steal the Acting Attorney General’s reservation like I’m Ferris Bueller and Todd Blanche is Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago?
How would I even know Todd Blanche was eating here tonight if I wasn’t Todd Blanche? How would a total stranger know that I had chosen tonight, out of all the nights in the 15 months I’ve lived in Washington, to treat my beautiful wife to the wide selection of antojitos at Cocina Mexicana?
We need a picture ID to do anything in America! Board a plane, open a bank account, buy alcohol, get through security at lots of government buildings. You need to show an ID to buy a gun from a licensed gun dealer. Who also might have had to prove their identity with a picture ID at some point to get that license! I can promise you, we hear complaints about that from Second Amendment types all the time.
About the only thing you don’t need picture ID for is voting. Well, Mr. Acting Attorney General, you are thinking, last time I checked, the Constitution didn’t include an inalienable right to eat at Applebee’s. We’ll see how smug you are when I leak to POLITICO that Cocina Mexicana doesn’t check IDs against its list of reservations!
This is an outrage. Every restaurant I’ve ever been to, I have shown my ID before I’ve done anything else. Even before I walk through the door, I’m reaching for my wallet and pulling out my ID and waving it in the face of the first employee I see. Sometimes that’s a busboy, and yeah, sometimes that busboy gives me a weird look like it’s not something everyone does when they first walk into a restaurant.
Every time, yes. I show ID. I’ll show it to the maitre d’ at the Capital Grille and the hostess at Chili’s and the teenager with the nose ring working the salsa station behind the counter at Chipotle, I don’t give a fuck.
I do not see why you wouldn’t look at my ID just because [making air quotes with fingers] “It’s not necessary” or “No one else does it.” In my experience, most people say they don’t lick the grease traps in their stove clean either. But that doesn’t make it unnecessary.
I am the Acting Attorney General of the United States of America, and I demand you check my ID before you show me to my table.
Look at my driver’s license. Look at it! Look at that picture. I had my hair cut and my jowls lifted just before I went to the DMV specifically so I would be clearly recognizable to every maitre d’ and every hostess and every truck-stop waitress in America. I don’t want there to be any confusion that when a person with an ID that says he is Todd Blanche walks into, say, a Waffle House in Rabbit Droppings, Arkansas, that person is in fact me, Todd Blanche.
I will not calm down. You are making a mockery of all picture IDs and picture-ID-related activities in America!
Listen, I can prosecute you under federal law. I can send ICE agents and health inspectors here on a constant basis. Under Donald Trump, who is America’s greatest president, lawless behavior is not going to be tolerated. That includes lowly maitre ‘d’s telling me, Todd Blanche, that anyone can walk into any restaurant at any time and be seated without even the barest nod in the direction of identity validation.
That’s better. Now show us to our table and send over the waitress who makes the guac.
[BlueSky]
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You know, the funniest thing in all this is that Blanche is the kind of guy that goes someplace and when he immediately doesn't gain entry and immediate recognition, he's all like "Do you know who I am?!" like a bitchy diva.
"Why are all the waitresses wearing tops?"