Am I the only one having trouble imagining someone who would be dumb enough to rough up the cops’ entrapment kid when he comes in to try to buy booze? The only plausible result would make losing your liquor license look like fun by comparison.
It is, unfortunately, not particularly uncommon for police to put informants they have leverage against into genuinely dangerous situations; but since one of these was a relative of the cops involved, I’m guessing that they weren’t picked out of that informant pool.
I’m not sure that a misspelling, especially such a common one, really amounts to a ‘nonword’. This source alleges that it’s a misspelling with a fairly long history; and one that has a fairly respectable frequency of appearance in print; which further bolsters its case for being at least a variant or regionalism or the like.
The fact that the whole “Let’s pretend that English is a romance language!!!” fad has lost substantial ground among all but the most radical prescriptivist reactionaries probably doesn’t hurt its case, either; since the ‘n’ definitely isn’t there if you pull directly from Latin or French; but has no obvious reason to be cut if you are treating ‘restaurant’ as your source and asking “So, what do we call someone who restaurants professionally?”
But why should us (presumably, all of us here) non-Nazis give a flying fuck what the number 88 means to Nazis? My Chinese acquaintances seem to love the number 8, and often will duplicate it (for extra luck, I guess). This isn’t a swastika – a well-known symbol the Nazis appropriated from another culture, but which is irredeemably fucked for eternity.
I don’t think that “88” is one of the eastern appropriations(though it coincides with an eastern-derived thing; and exists alongside a number of eastern appropriations). Assorted Nazis and others seem to have a thing for numeric substitution on English acronyms. Not entirely sure why; between the fact that it’s a trivial monoalphabetic substitution cipher and the fact that alliance is often public, they aren’t doing it to fool anyone; and it isn’t obviously cooler looking than just picking a snappy acronym.
I get that entrapment is legally and logically different from a sting operation, and that the former is unlawful while the latter is lawful.
I still think that a sting operation is morally ambiguous.
The cops aren’t inducing you to commit a crime that you would not have otherwise committed, but they sure as hell, by definition, are creating the opportunity for you to commit that crime.
Means, motive, and opportunity. Isn’t that a fundamental part of prosecution?
So, in the case of a sting operation, the cops are creating a third of the prosecution’s case.
Agree! But it takes effort when the dog-whistles are out there.
Yeah, I have that reaction too. In this case, though, the 88 comes from the other owner, Chef Milton Yin, whose other restaurants in Nebraska are “pan-Asian” and have the 88 in the name: Hiro 88, Pana 88.
But what if he (like me, coincidentally) graduated college in 1988 and simply wanted to commemorate that fact? Or perhaps it was the year of his birth, or birth of his child, or some other important date in his life? I have a real problem with ascribing nefarious motives to anyone based solely upon the color of their skin.
Ok, so appropriation isn’t the right word for it. I just mean that they use yet another word/item/symbol that is oft used in Eastern/Chinese culture and have given it another meaning
It looks like there is an ‘88 restaurants’ group in Omaha.
See e.g. the very bottom of this page http://hiro88.com/about-88/the-locations/ - “Other 88 restaurants”. So there’s the “American” food place, a sushi restaurant, and a pan-asian fusion place, managed by “Yin management”, which is a family business of the Yin family, who are indeed ethnically Chinese.
So, as @thomasta suggested, it’s probably from the association of the number 8 with luck and fortune in Chinese culture.
So yeah - its one of those things to be aware of, but unlike say the swastika or white supremacist flag, in America, there is a lot more use of things that the white supremacists might use, that people use every day with no ties to white supremacists.
I recall way back in the day there was a minor concern that a Laura Croft statue from Japan (IIRC) had white laces on her black boots, which I guess is also a Neo Nazi thing. Someone also old me if you see a guy with his hand in his pocket or on his belt, and 3 fingers showing, it was a KKK sign. Dunno if that is urban legend or not, but I imagine many people might do that with out knowing.
These sorts of stings are ten tons of bullshit. It isn’t hard to figure out which places are blatantly selling underaged. Its typically well known in a given area. And a sting like this might very well be a good way to catch them in the act. But as commonly practiced these are less sting than random spot checks. An employee makes a single mistake and you’re in shit. In my area it leads to a typical fine of $6k for the business. And the arrest of the Bartender with attendant personal fines.
And sometimes they don’t even bother with the sting part. While I was working in a particularly wealthy tourist village one summer to local PD swept the town. They arrested the bar staff of all but 2 restaurants and bars in the village, and shuttered the restaurants for the night. I happened to be working at one of the two they skipped. Essentially the idea was to arrest everyone check all present customers for ID and figure it all out later. Something like 20 Bartenders spent the night in jail. And whether there were underage drinkers in their place or not went home with fines.
There’s been a big push to offload responsibility for underage drinking and drunk driving not just to the businesses selling alcohol. But to the staff. You get behind the wheel after too many and get caught I will be arrested. You pass a fake ID in my establishment? I will be arrested. It makes no difference if I was forced to serve in order to keep my job. It makes no difference if it I had no reason to believe you were underage. Or drunk. Or driving.
