Have you ever heard of Thanksgiving Eve? It’s what’s referred to as the night before Thanksgiving, also known as the busiest drinking night of the year.
Not in Pennsylvania in 2020 however. Because of a spike in COVID-19 cases, the state has banned alcohol sales in restaurants in bars starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday until 8 a.m. on Thursday.
This announcement begs one obvious question: Who the hell is drinking at a bar at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning? “I think you all know the commonwealth is in a precarious place right now,” Gov. Tom Wolf said at a press conference. “We have gotten into a place where we have more cases now than we have ever had.”
The story took a bizarre turn when well-known Philadelphia restaurateur Marc Vetri sent out a tweet calling out Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine. Vetri has been very critical of what the state is doing to try to slow down the spread of COVID. He didn’t get in trouble for ripping politicians, however, but because he seemed to misgender Levine, who is a transgender woman. “He can go f*** himself,” Vetri tweeted in reply to Billy Penn editor Danya Henninger, who stated Levine’s name in a post about the state’s alcohol ban on Thanksgiving eve.
Vetri was hammered on social media for what he later said was a mistake, explaining he was referring to Gov. Wolf and not Levine. ”I obviously had no intention at all of sending [Levine] any message like that,” Vetri said. “It’s horrifying. I feel awful. I’m f***ing nauseous.”
Vetri later said he would call Levine personally and do anything he can to make amends. “That’s what I’ll do. I’m going to basically leave it up to her. She’s the one who’s at the brunt of all this. Respectfully, I’m less worried about what the social media world thinks, and I’m just really sad that I might have hurt her feelings. I don’t want that at all.”
The one night these people could definitely use a drink, they can’t have one.
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