Young Libertarians Think Food Inspectors are “Evil Communists” And Should Be Outlawed
They also seem to want to aggressively name-call women who are just doing their jobs
I just saw one of the most bizarre social media rants ever from a young “Libertarian.”
Cliff Maloney, Jr., a Pennsylvania-based right-wing political activist, was eating at a Boston-area restaurant when the local food inspector stopped by.
The inspection interrupted Cliff’s meal.
He responded with the following social media post:
The community note is true. It omits that fact that in addition to 3,000 annual fatalities from food-borne illness, one in six people gets food poisoning every year. Over 120,000 people are hospitalized from food poisoning each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
I, and anyone else who’s ever been involved in business development and food manufacture, sales, and handling, am aware that U.S. food and restaurants are not as clean or as safe as restaurants in Europe and some Asian nations. But they are cleaner and safer than they would be without county health departments and food inspectors.
No one in the restaurant industry “likes” food inspectors or food safety inspections. But they like the ability to post an “A” safety ranking in their windows, and the confidence those ratings inspire in customers.
The header image for this article was taken at the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand has government-based food safety inspectors and has initiated a street food safety campaign. However, tourist guides note that visitors should “visually check for food safety” and watch for flies landing on street food. The U.S., even with food safety inspections, is on the list of the world’s top ten countries where travelers are most likely to get food poisoning. Thailand, too, is on the list, coming in at #10.
Spain, however, came in at #1, with 30% of travelers noting they got food poisoning while traveling there.
Food Poisoning Is No Fun
Alexander the Great reportedly died of food poisoning (and not the intentional kind). In the late 19th century, “Typhoid Mary,” aka Mary Mallon, was a healthy carrier of typhoid who repeatedly sought work in restaurants and the homes of wealthy people who ultimately infected thousands of people with typhoid fever, resulting in the deaths of over 100 people. Mary was ultimately incarcerated to keep her from continuing to infect others with the potentially fatal illness. Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, my own great aunt Jessie died of scarlet fever which she and hundreds of other local Riverside, California residents got from drinking infected milk from a local dairy.
Most sane people don’t want to eat spoiled or infected food and appreciate the processes that help to keep their food stored safely, cooked safely, and served at a safe temperature.
Not Cliff Maloney, though.
Cliff believes that the “customers can decide.”
I’m not sure whether or not the diner where Cliff’s meal was interrupted by the “evil” “communist” food inspector passed or failed. When restaurants egregiously fail health inspections in most areas, they get shut down.
Maybe Cliff eats eggs, in which case he might inadvertently appreciate not getting a salmonella egg.
According to the CDC, you can get salmonella from eggs in a variety of ways. Signs and symptoms of salmonella infection include diarrhea, fever, stomach cramps, and bloody stools. Children under age 5 and adults over age 65 are most vulnerable to serious salmonella infection that can be fatal. Individuals with other health problems such as diabetes, heart, lung, and kidney disease, are also vulnerable to fatal salmonella infection.
So, of course, Cliff would not want his breakfast of eggs and bacon interrupted by an “evil” “communist” food inspector.
He would just trust that the diner was handling eggs safely.
And if not, oh well!
Guys like Cliff seem to idolize guys like Alexander the Great, who died at age 32 of presumed salmonella poisoning, about the same age as Cliff is right now.
Food poisoning might not get Cliff. He probably doesn’t wear a seatbelt, either.
One has to wonder if people like Cliff having such outsized platforms (millions of views for his food inspector rant and gender-biased attacks — pretty sure if a Clint Eastwood-looking and acting man was inspecting the Boston breakfast diner, we wouldn’t be seeing any accusations of “evil communist man”) should be allowed.
After all, we do not allow raging alcoholics to make laws about drunk driving. We don’t allow people convicted of writing bad checks to make laws about financial institutions.
But we do allow billionaires to dictate our national policies about a lot of things, don’t we?
I didn’t know until writing this that “Typhoid Mary” was only discovered to be the source of the deadly typhoid outbreaks in the 1890s when she went to work for and sickened the members of wealthy families.
I know what it’s like to be accused of a crime I did not do, and I saw first-hand what happened to people who could have been as innocent as I was, but who lacked my financial and other social resources.
However, I was not surprised to see that Cliff Maloney, Jr. — a young man who would be so vituperative as to call a health inspector a “scumbag,” “evil woman,” and “communist” because in the course of her job, she interrupted his breakfast — had not only been accused of rape while a student at the University of Pittsburgh, he had been put on trial for the crime.
I don’t know any of the facts of the case, nor am I interested. Maloney was acquitted of four counts of which he was charged, and the remaining two have been dismissed.
All I know is Maloney is so self-entitled and flat-out stupid that he’d say a food inspector was “evil” and a “communist” because her work entailed interrupting his meal at a small diner. That’s there on the face of it. Maloney also states he has “created” 2,000 jobs and what the hell are those? Ballot canvassers for his “mail in ballot for Republican candidate” initiatives?
He’s a blowhard with no self control and inadequate education who has already acted as a massive troublemaker.
You bet Maloney both disrespects and hates women — much less, as evidenced by the fact he can’t wait ten minutes for a meal — lacks common sense and even a remote concern for safety. Did that restaurant where he was eating think the food inspector shouldn’t have been there?
It’s impossible to know as this is his poisonous opinion and social media opinion, not theirs. However, if so: sure — no one should eat there, especially not salmonella eggs for breakfast.
It’s about time our society stopped being run by verbally abusive men with the personal discipline, intelligence, and self-control of toddlers on crack. Men like Maloney are entitled to their personal opinions but that’s about it.
The only reason this is an issue is because social media distributed it so widely. If Maloney had actually breached the same words he used online to the inspector in person, she would have metaphorically cut his balls off...
Just another loudmouth failson a healthy human society would ignore, banish or redacted.