Poor Mayor Street can't get no respect.

I say this notwithstanding the fact that he has gotten very little respect in this blog, but I do try to be fair, and that means not shying away from agreeing with someone I normally disagree with. Obviously, I cannot spend all of my time looking for such unlikely areas of agreement, but when it's relevant to something I've recently discussed, well, fair is fair.

Especially now that a local issue (Joey Vento's "Speak English" sign) has become a national issue. Yesterday it occupied the top half of the Philadelphia Inquirer's front page, and today the Inquirer has devoted an entire editorial to it.

Mayor Street's comments have been relegated to the back pages of the Local News section (on page B-6 in my copy). Perhaps the problem is that the Mayor sides with Joey Vento's First Amendment rights:

"I speculate that [owner Joey Vento] has a right to that sign," Street said, "if he faithfully and without any kind of discrimination serves anyone who comes up to that window, no matter the language that person speaks, in spite of the fact that he has a sign."

Why that isn't considered more newsworthy in his hometown paper, I don't know. Perhaps it'll play better nationally, but who knows . . .

I don't know why the Inquirer isn't displaying more respect for the Mayor, but I suspect it's because his position contradicts that of the Inquirer. From today's editorial:

Judging from the national avalanche of comments, and the lines outside the South Philadelphia landmark, Vento touched a nerve in the debate over immigration. The question posed by the complaint is whether Vento also crossed a line.

If he's found to have denied service to customers due to their national origin, or turned them away just by virtue of posting the sign, then Vento may have run afoul of the law.

It's one thing to mount a soapbox and gripe about people who speak little or no English. It's another thing to push that viewpoint while running an establishment supposedly open to all customers.

Opposing bias isn't hyper-sensitive political correctness. Sure, Vento has free-speech rights. But sometimes one person's right bumps against another person's, and something has to give. Vento is running a public accommodation, just like those lunch counters in the segregated South where African Americans couldn't get a seat. Some of the arguments that some of Vento's defenders are offering sound awfully familiar from those days.

To be fair, the analogy ends there. It's hard to link any actual harm to Vento's English-only grandstanding. He's not accused of actually refusing service to any customer.

What gives, anyway?

If I were Joey Vento, and they told me to take down the sign, I'd probably take some red spray paint and alter the message.

From this --

This Is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING "SPEAK ENGLISH."

To this --

This Is NOT AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING DO NOT "SPEAK ENGLISH."

MORE: According to Wikipedia,

Vento is a prominent supporter of the family of murdered police officer Daniel Faulkner. The family supports the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of Faulkner's murder, and is against Abu-Jamal being retried or exonerated. Geno's has sponsored several fund-raising events in support of Faulkner's family, including the 2000 First Annual Justice For Daniel Faulkner Block Party and an annual Daniel Faulkner Memorial Motorcycle Run.