Waffle House is in the news once more, and it’s not good for the quintessential American diner’s image. Thankfully, however, this time no one was shot or killed.

According to CBS News, a row erupted as an Alabama Waffle House insisted on charging two customers, Chikesia Clemons and her friend, 50 cents for using takeout utensils in the diner.

The incensed Clemons reportedly asked restaurant employees for a phone number with which to contact their corporate offices. The employees refused to share the number with the woman and eventually, police were called.

Employees described the woman to police as drunk, saying that she tried to bring alcohol into the diner and threatened to shoot the staff. That brings us, more or less, to the video that has riled up tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people.

The video can be seen by clicking on this CBS link, but be warned the content is graphic and contains partial, though nonsexual, nudity.

But those taking to social media to decry the diner with the “BoycottWaffleHouse” hashtag have missed a vital detail — two actually — that are game-changers.

First, police tried to get the woman to leave the restaurant on behalf of Waffle House. The video clearly shows them asking, ordering and even tugging at her in an attempt to get her to go. Second, another person, presumably her friend (the videographer) asked her to leave as well.

Those parts of the video are easy to miss, especially because the rest is so graphic, but if you stop to think about it, they’re quite important.

Waffle House is a private company that can charge for utensils if they want. They can even do it unfairly, as long as they’re not doing it based on a protected class (race, religion, etc). It’s pathetic to charge for takeout utensils, and even worse to be capricious about it, but it is their right.

(If you bridle at that a little because it doesn’t seem just, remember that liberty has to be protected, even if it feels yucky. Hate speech is a good example. The people who engage in true hate speech are despicable. But it’s their right to be hateful as long as in doing so, they don’t violate another person’s freedom.)

It’s also the woman’s right to be angry about it and to tell the restaurant so. But it’s not her right to squat on their property, which she appears to have very clearly done, despite the urging of police and her friend.

Everyone’s upset that Waffle House called the police and that the police ultimately used force. But what else were they to do if she refused to leave and they didn’t want to provide a free item? Should the employees have simply stood idly by, helpless in the face of an angry customer impacting business? This woman had the right to say her piece, and Waffle House had the right to say “enough” and send her on her way.

Another reason for this internet outrage is that it’s harder to see Waffle House’s rights than it is to see her being taken to the ground. Her violation of Waffle House’s rights doesn’t make a big impression on the average viewer, but the video of the officers’ intervention does.

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Now, all of that said, it’s perfectly reasonable to boycott Waffle House if they engaged in a ridiculously silly business move to charge for utensils.

What’s not reasonable is boycotting the chain for exercising their right to have an angry squatter removed. After all, would you want to be protested against just because you called the police to kick an angry customer out of your yard sale?

The police also merit our attention. It looks like they were probably very patient (especially since the video abruptly cut to the takedown, potentially editing out much more negotiation with the customer). Still, threatening to break the woman’s arm is over the line (especially for a government representative), as is putting a hand around the front of her neck, which one of the officers appeared to do.

That accomplished nothing and only inflamed things, making cops everywhere look bad.

The final indignity in all of this was the fact that the woman’s dress fell down, exposing her chest. That’s a shame in every way, but it’s also more her fault than anyone else’s. After all, if you’re walking around thinking that your right to inconvenience someone trumps their right to be left alone, then you ought to dress for the occasion — maybe a button-down?

Finally, we need to acknowledge what’s behind all of this: entitlement mentality. We see it everywhere now, regardless of race, creed or religion.

To borrow from the old children’s song,

We all love our unearned rights; All we entitled of the word; Red and yellow, black or white; We all think our way is right; We all love our precious unearned rights.

With the self-esteem movement and postmodernism having yielded incredibly egocentric, egotistical adults, our culture now affirms the idea that we all have a right to do anything we want and hear only what we want. That’s not liberty. It’s narcissism — thinking you’re somehow above someone else’s rights.

Liberty properly understood is the freedom to do as you wish up to the point that your rights encroach on another’s. Anywhere past that point and you are de facto in the wrong because you’re suppressing their rights in favor of your own.

And that’s what the #BoycottWaffleHouse crowd is missing. This woman, very possibly justified in her anger, believed herself entitled to do whatever she wanted, including ignoring apparent requests that she leave the property from management, police and even the person taking the video.

That’s the problem with entitlement. It feels so nice when you’re exercising it, but when it meets the real world it gets crushed like an angry person being takes to the ground by police.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below!

There’s always been some speculation among CNN watchers that the “Most Trusted Name In News” conspicuously goes to commercial or has their feed cut when one of the talking heads on their network says something inconvenient.

Of course, nobody can prove this happens intentionally — indeed, one almost feels a bit conspiracy theory-ish even saying it — but it’s certainly odd.

The latest instance of the mysterious CNN cutoff happened Monday, when CNN’s national security commentator, Mike Rogers, was interviewed about the Russia investigation.

Rogers, a former congressman who’s also had stints with the Army and FBI, said that if no evidence against the president is turned up, it’s time to end the “eternal investigations” involving Trump and Russian collusion.

“Listen, at some point, you know where I stood on all this,” Rogers said. “I believe Mueller should have the freedom to do the investigation. The IG report on both what the FBI did and what the Russians were up to, all of that’s really important.”

However, he said that “at some point you have to stop. This has been going on for a long time.”

Rogers then laid out something of an ultimatum for the Mueller investigation.

“So my argument to Mueller is, if you have some evidence here, let’s go, bring it out, let’s deal with it,” Rogers said. “If not, at some point we have to stop the … eternal investigations that happen surrounding this, and the clubs that come out. So the investigations that have happened on the Intel Committee already have been candidly, quite partisan, and partisan in nature, both from the Democrats and the Republicans.

“If it switches, you’re going to get more of the same,” he added, a reference to the prospect of Democrats taking control of the House after the November elections. “I don’t know how that’s helpful to the country moving on and trying to heal itself and then actually producing something that would stop the Russians from interfering in our elections.”

And with that, CNN went to commercial.

Given that CNN’s been pushing the Russia thing pretty hard (one is surprised they don’t have a 24-hour feed of a camera trained on the Kremlin in the lower right quarter of the screen just to really drive the point home), it’s somewhat embarrassing when the network’s own national security analyst basically acknowledges that the investigation has become — in the parlance of our time — a nothingburger and ought to be wrapped up.

It’s not a good look. Then again, not much on CNN is, but there you go,.

RELATED: CBS Shamelessly Runs Program on the Inevitable Assassination of Trump

Now, was this one of CNN’s famous cuts — if such cuts even exist? It certainly didn’t seem as suspicious as some of their “accidental” feed drops, like this one when a guest started to suggest a link between terror suspects and incoming refugees.

On the other hand, we’ll really never know if CNN’s “technical difficulties” were intentional. And, quite frankly, I think it’s better that way.

For one, it’s more fun to speculate about whether or not it’s happening, kind of like how it’s more fun speculating whether or not their are aliens at Area 51.

Second, it’s kind of a hard theory to believe. After all, if CNN cut the feed every time someone on their network said or did something that embarrassed the network, they’d be off the air half the time.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below!

Facebook has published a 27-page document outlining how the company moderates content on their platform and a new appeals process for users who believe their content was unfairly deleted.

In a surprise attempt at transparency, Facebook has decided to reveal their 27-page community standards document which outlines what content is banned from their platform and why user accounts may be suspended for publishing certain content. This seems to be another push by Facebook to show just how much content they have to moderate on their platform following criticism from Congress recently for the alleged limiting of certain Facebook pages such as that of conservative YouTube stars Diamond and Silk.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Management, according to Wired. Facebook’s decision to publish their content guidelines appears to be in an effort to explain to the public that they do have set rules and guidelines for what they allow on their platform. “I have actually had conversations where I talked about our standards and people said, ‘I didn’t actually realize you guys have policies,’” said Bickert.

According to the content policy, Facebook leans towards allowing content to stay on the platform rather than remove it. “We err on the side of allowing content, even when some find it objectionable, unless removing that content prevents a specific harm,” states the community standards guidelines. The document released today clearly explains a number of situations in which content should be removed, for example, videos that show “tossing, rotating, or shaking of an infant too young to stand by their wrists, ankles, arms, legs, or neck,” should be removed from the platform. Similarly, links to psychological resources and help centers must be provided to anyone that posts “images where more than one cut of self mutilation is present on a body part and the primary subject of the image is one or more unhealed cuts.”

A whole section of the community standards document is dedicated to “hate speech,” this section reads:

We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence.

We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.

Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others. Similarly, in some cases, words or terms that might otherwise violate our standards are used self-referentially or in an empowering way. When this is the case, we allow the content, but we expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it. Where the intention is unclear, we may remove the content.

We allow humor and social commentary related to these topics. In addition, we believe that people are more responsible when they share this kind of commentary using their authentic identity.

In another section, Facebook outlines how they’re attempting to fight fake news:

Disrupting economic incentives for people, Pages, and domains that propagate misinformation

Using various signals, including feedback from our community, to inform a machine learning model that predicts which stories may be false

Reducing the distribution of content rated as false by independent third-party fact-checkers

Empowering people to decide for themselves what to read, trust, and share by informing them with more context and promoting news literacy

Collaborating with academics and other organizations to help solve this challenging issue

Facebook’s full community standards can be read here.