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Bar owner escapes fine for mocking Marion Barry

September 12, 2012 | 5:38 pm | Modified: September 12, 2012 at 5:40 pm
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$10,000: The amount of money in fines Tony Tomelden, owner of H St. bar the Pug, could have faced if he did not remove his Marion Berry's Dirty Asian Summer Punch off the menu and take down a crude sign advertising it. Last Thursday, reports The Washington Post, the DC Commission on Human Rights gave Tomelden 72 hours to remove both, or the agency could have formally charged him with violating the District's Human Rights Act.

Tomelden's punch was, of course, a reference to Ward 8 council member Marion Barry's comments about "dirty [Asian] shops" and Filipino nurses made earlier this year. He expressed his irritation with the city's interference with his political critique. "Look, I'm a [expletive] bartender," he told the Post, "not a constitutional scholar. It's clearly frustrating, and it is what it is."

He added, "I wonder if they are going to make the Irish bars take down the leprechauns."

h/t: The Washington Post

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