{"id":40894,"date":"2017-05-26T00:30:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T03:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=40894"},"modified":"2017-05-26T01:24:14","modified_gmt":"2017-05-26T04:24:14","slug":"mikey-weinstein-throws-tantrum-at-tobyhanna-no-one-notices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/26\/mikey-weinstein-throws-tantrum-at-tobyhanna-no-one-notices\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikey Weinstein Throws Tantrum at Tobyhanna.  No One Notices."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In early May an aggrieved civilian working at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania contacted Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein with a religious complaint so horrible, so egregious, so <em>dangerous<\/em> that it is amazing it had not already caused massive loss of life.<\/p>\n<p>Someone was wearing a hat.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/2017\/05\/mrff-demands-punishment-of-gate-guard-at-tobyhanna-army-depot-for-unconstitutional-violation\/\">Quoth Weinstein<\/a> [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear Col. Peterson,<\/p>\n<p>Sir, one of your <strong>armed, DOD, Army, civilian gate guards<\/strong> at the Tobyhanna Army Depot Main or \u201cScranton\u201d gate is <strong>wearing a baseball hat<\/strong> with the biblical citation from the New Testament Book of John \u201c<strong>3:16<\/strong>\u201d on it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>MRFF demands that you immediately order that offending gate guard to expeditiously remove that Christian-<strong>proselytizing baseball hat<\/strong> and appropriately, <strong>aggressively<\/strong> and <strong>visibly<\/strong> <strong>punish<\/strong> that individual as well as <strong>all others in his chain of command<\/strong> who are either directly or indirectly responsible&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It just takes a hat to convert people?\u00a0 Missionaries have been doing it wrong all these years.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out Weinstein was pretty far off the mark. First, it seems\u00a0<!--more-->the person in question <em>not<\/em> armed &#8212; a detail Weinstein felt was <strong>so important\u00a0<\/strong>he <strong>specifically\u00a0<\/strong>called it out &#8212; yet\u00a0he got it completely wrong. Second, he also wasn&#8217;t dressed like a gate guard &#8212; because he wasn&#8217;t one.<\/p>\n<p>Upon receiving\u00a0this information about the person with whom he&#8217;d supposedly personally interacted and by whom he&#8217;d been offended, Weinstein&#8217;s &#8220;client&#8221; complained yet again, saying<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have been entering that same gate every morning for many many years and have never been checked by anyone but either an armed Dept. of the Army civilian security guard or an armed active duty Army security officer&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sorry, but if <strong>you didn&#8217;t even realize<\/strong> the person who you saw <em>that day <\/em><strong>wasn&#8217;t wearing a gun<\/strong>, how can you honestly attest to\u00a0that never happening before? Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?<\/p>\n<p>It turns out Weinstein&#8217;s target <em>was<\/em> wearing a hat with &#8220;3:16&#8221; on it &#8212; which every child of the 90s knows is a reference to professional wrestler <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stone_Cold_Steve_Austin#Austin_3:16_and_feud_with_Hart_Foundation_.281996.E2.80.931997.29\">Stone Cold Steve Austin<\/a>. Apparently, Mikey Weinstein and his easily offended followers figured the person was trying to subliminally convert them to WWE wrestling through proximity to his headgear.<\/p>\n<p>For their part, it seems Tobyhanna handled the complaint somewhat well. Though Weinstein addressed his invective to the Depot&#8217;s commander, US Army Col Greg Peterson, a response came only from Tobyhanna&#8217;s Public Affairs office &#8212; which, if you&#8217;re going to respond at all, would be the right place. (Tobyhanna has been the subject of <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2016\/04\/18\/congressman-freedom-advocates-object-to-powmia-bible-removals\/\">Weinstein&#8217;s scorn before<\/a> &#8212; likely because the same &#8220;victims&#8221; are still there &#8212; so they may know the drill.) Tobyhanna also cited their governing guidance, which in this case wasn&#8217;t military regulations, but\u00a0&#8220;Guidelines on Religious Exercise and Expression in the Federal Workplace&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The ever-salient Chris Rodda finally weighed in, and she chose to abandon her <strong>religious<\/strong> freedom &#8220;charity&#8217;s&#8221; <strong>religious<\/strong> complaint and instead\u00a0put the MRFF in the role of\u00a0security monitor for the Army:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In these days when the security of our military installations is an issue of paramount importance, Tobyhanna Army Depot is actually allowing untrained, unarmed civilian employees to help out by playing security guard at its main gate!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Of note, Chris Rodda never says how she was able to figure out the person in question was &#8220;untrained.&#8221;\u00a0Apparently we just need to trust her.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been decades since Chris Rodda was in the Army, and she apparently\u00a0doesn&#8217;t remember ever &#8220;playing&#8221; gate guard. But, perhaps as a result of\u00a0these modern days of constrained resources, it is not uncommon for Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, or their civilian counterparts to &#8220;augment&#8221; base security at the access gates. It is also not unusual for commanders, senior enlisted leadership, chaplains, public affairs, and even just random troops to volunteer to spend time with the men and women who stand guard. It&#8217;s a normal, benign event for a variety of base-associated personnel to be involved with gate security.<\/p>\n<p>The most interesting part of this exercise, however, was the deafening silence that followed.<\/p>\n<p>Weinstein posted the story on his Facebook page no less than three times, generating only a few comments &#8212; most of which seemed to be mocking him. (Of note, he didn&#8217;t pay Facebook to distribute it this time.) Chris Rodda cross posted her blog on a couple of different sites (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2017\/5\/9\/1660499\/-US-Army-Gate-Guard-at-Military-Base-Wearing-Bible-Verse-Hat-OK-Because-He-Wasn-t-a-Real-Gate-Guard\">DailyKos<\/a> and her personal blog at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/59121b22e4b0e3bb894d5b43\">the Huffington Post<\/a>) &#8212; which similarly generated almost no interest. Weinstein&#8217;s normal press contacts at the Military Times, Military.com, and a few other sites didn&#8217;t seem interested in the story.<\/p>\n<p>It seems even Mikey Weinstein can&#8217;t manufacture a good scandal anymore &#8212; which may explain the recent lull in vitriol with which he attacks the US military. Is this faux outrage on a baseball cap really the\u00a0worst thing\u00a0Weinstein&#8217;s been able to come up with?\u00a0 It&#8217;s been months since he <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2017\/03\/20\/general-julie-bentz-prays-for-her-troops-so-mikey-weinstein-wants-her-fired\/\">demanded Gen Bentz be fired<\/a>, and he was ignored then, too.<\/p>\n<p>It seems 2017 has been a rough year for Mikey.\u00a0 If Weinstein isn&#8217;t careful, his donors are going to start wondering if they&#8217;re getting their money&#8217;s worth.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, maybe that&#8217;s what&#8217;s motivating him to manufacture ridiculous &#8220;controversies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In early May an aggrieved civilian working at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania contacted Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein with a religious complaint so horrible, so egregious, so dangerous that it is amazing it had not already caused massive loss of life. Someone was wearing a hat. Quoth Weinstein [emphasis added]: Dear Col. Peterson, Sir, one of your armed, DOD, Army, civilian [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6250,88,5284,175,6252,85,2,5218,7,10,171,6251,5600],"class_list":["post-40894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-6250","tag-army","tag-chaplain","tag-chris-rodda","tag-greg-peterson","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-steve-austin","tag-tobyhanna-army-depot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}