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The owner of Pronto Pup, a popular corndog stand in beachside Grand Haven, says he's sorry for accidentally posting a political tirade on his business Facebook page and not his personal page.
In the meandering, grammatically-challenged rant, owner Carl Nelson starts off by criticizing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's new mandate that people wear masks indoors to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It appears that Nelson was trying to make himself into some sort of political martyr à la "defiant Michigan barber" Karl Manke, who became a political flashpoint (and Fox News darling) for refusing to stop cutting hair during the coronavirus crisis.
"My personal opinion is to have the Health Department shut me down," Nelson wrote. "(This looks better for me in the future law suite [sic]."
But Nelson says he didn't want to endanger his employees by putting them out of work, so he put the issue to a vote. Most voted, sensibly, to just wear the damn masks.
Case closed, right? Wrong. At this point, Nelson takes a detour into RacismTown.
"We will remain open until someone claims the color of the building is offensive. (White)," he wrote.
That's when things really explode, with Nelson claiming COVID-19 is "the common cold," that the "Fucking Media" controls everything, that he wants to stencil "WHITE LIVES MATTER" on the street, that Black Lives Matter has "absolutely nothing to do with racism" and that it's funded by George Soros (who he also threatened to assassinate), and that Whitmer's mask order amounts to "treason."
"If my Dad or Grandfather were alive today they would beat the shit out of me for standing by and letting this happen to our state/nation," he wrote. "Freedoms [sic] gone that they gave their lives for."
Uh, sir, this is a hot dog stand...
Anyway, you can read the entire screed below, which was archived as screenshots by a Facebook user in a post.
After the screenshots were shared more than 1,000 times, Pronto Pup distanced itself from Nelson's rant.
"There was a post meant for the owner's personal account that was accidentally posted to this page tonight," it wrote. "We have removed it, as it was not intended to be a Pronto Pup post. The post was in no way representative of Pronto Pup as a business or our staff members. We are not sure how to make this right at the moment but we will try to figure that out. We are truly sorry for any hurt or offense this has caused."
Nelson followed up with his own apology.
"Never would I have thought my post would have upset so many people," he wrote. (We are skeptical of this claim, since his rant opened with "Have a seat. This is going to hurt a little.")
"As the deterioration of our nation and freedoms as we have enjoyed over the decades begin to dwindle away,... I snapped," he wrote.
You can read his apology below.
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