VIRGINIA IS FOR LOSERS

Racism, Sexism, & Handicap Discrimination

No!  It’s for Lovers.  Just like the ads say!

Nope.  We’re dealing with reality, not fantasy, here.

Once upon a time, the Commonwealth of Virginia worked.  Its governments, State and local, were responsive to citizens’ needs.  Only the federal government was dysfunctional, obsessed as it was and still is with identity politics, reverse racism, and the sex of its appointees.

Today, Virginia has followed the lead of people like Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and his disordered family.  Northern Virginia, in particular, is now more concerned with discriminating against people who need help but, unfortunately, have the wrong race, wrong sex, wrong age, and the wrong physical abilities.

Here’s the Story on That.  In January 2022, I made the mistake of joining the gym Planet Fitness, in Pentagon City, a near suburb of Washington, D.C. where I live.  I had given up on the city because its government had twice closed down the gyms throughout the town because of Covid hysteria.  A friend had recommended Planet Fitness, and, upon my visiting, it greatly impressed me.  It was clean, bright, and staffed with friendly people, one of whom was an Arab Muslim from Al Quds, (i.e., Jerusalem to non-Arabs).  Indeed, this person introduced me to several other Arabs keeping fit there.

Moreover, Planet Fitness offered a wide variety of work-out equipment that exercised just about every muscle in the body.  I was delighted since I suffer from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.  This is a degenerative, incurable neurological illness that has nothing to do with teeth.  Rather, it was named after two Frenchmen and a Briton who studied it in the 19^th Century.  It causes atrophy of the muscles in the extremities.  Since it cannot be alleviated, my medicos, including a neurologist, recommended exercise as a way of remaining fit and slowing the advance of the illness.

I drove to the gym frequently and was extremely satisfied.  I met several pleasant members, including the Arabs, an elderly man recovering from cancer treatment, and a married Chinese couple, one of whom worked for NIH (the National Institutes of Health). 

The Discrimination Starts.  Late in November 2022, I walked into the gym and was told I could not train because my membership had been canceled.  The staff, minus the Palestinian who had moved to Georgia with her husband, were arrogant and insisted I could not work out, even while I tried to resolve the issue.

Several days later, I found an email from Planet Fitness, asserting I had violated their terms and conditions of membership.  But the message did not specify what it was that I had supposedly done, or why the company canceled my membership.

This generated my online complaint to the firm, demanding to know their reasons for stopping my membership.

As is usual with American firms today, Planet Fitness did not respond.

After some cogitation, I wondered if this wasn’t retaliation for my complaint to an apparently new staff member.  One day in November 2022, I was warming up on an exercise bike when I heard and saw a man, perhaps 15 feet (4.6 meters) away, being visibly, audibly, and violently sick.  Inter alia, he would cough so strongly that he would double over from the exertion.  I brought this to the attention of the staffer, questioning how she could let this guy in, given all the signs promoting the gym’s cleanliness and attention to the health of its members.  Her response?  “I have no authority to keep him out.”

My Next Mistake.  Instead of protesting to Arlington’s Office of Public Health, I went to the County’s Human Rights Commission in December 2022.  Figuring that there was more to my membership cancellation than protesting Planet Fitness’ policy of letting sick people into the gym, I thought about possible reasons for the firm keeping me out.  No longer young, I wondered if my greying hair didn’t harm the gym’s image of youthful fitness.  Moreover, I had started coming to the health club with a cane.  That sure didn’t advertise the benefits of exercise at the place.  After more cogitation, I wondered if my race, Caucasian, didn’t somehow figure into my situation.  After all, the terribly sick, unknown disease-spreader was a member of the Negro race, as were the obnoxious staff members who kept me out of the gum—and couldn’t give me information on to whom and how I could object to my treatment.

The Arlington County Human Rights Commission Is So Woke That It Doesn’t Use Caffeine.   After months of inaction, I emailed and telephoned Juan Torres (no photo available) whom the Commission had assigned to work with me.  Eventually, I had a call from Mr. Torres, a dark-skinned Hispanic.  He seemed to question my use of the English language, my mother tongue, perfected through achieving three university degrees.  Most of his questions centered on why I had not referred to the diseased Negro as “black” or “a person of color”, or “African-American”.  My replies were:

1.      Negro is the Latin word for black.  Using “black” to describe people who, generally aren’t, seemed more like the plantation owner raving about the lazy “blacks” in the fields.

2.     How does “a person of color” differ from “colored person”, particularly since the oldest Negro civil rights organization is the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?

3.     Is an Egyptian-American friend also an “African-American” since Egypt is in Africa?

Mr. Torres had no answers but later said that, to get a copy of Planet Fitness’ response to my complaint, I must file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the County Attorney’s Office!!!  He couldn’t tell me if the gym had to file one to see my charges against it.  I subsequently made a FOIA request but have yet to see the document.  For that, I blame the County Attorney Minhchau Corr and a member of her staff, Adrienne Sakyi Fine.

The Arlington County Attorney Evidently Serves Special Interests Not the Law.

Adrienne Sakyi Fine:  I’ve received emails from an Assistant Attorney in that office, Adrienne Sakyi Fine, an apparent Ghanaian.  She demanded that I appear personally to identify myself if I wanted a copy of the Planet Fitness response to my complaint!!!  When she finds it.  Apparently, the County Attorney’s office doesn’t know where it is.(According to a Ghanaian friend, Sakyi is a Ghanaian name, not Japanese or another kind of Asian.) 

Adrienne Sakyi Fine

Mrs. Fine has failed in her duties to enforce the law regarding FOIA requests.  This is not so surprising since her previous employer, Schempf & Ware PLLC, had her working, not with FOIA issues or discrimination, but on such matters as Business Law, Family Law, Personal Injury, and Real Estate Law. She is apparently laboring hard, in conjunction with Planet Fitness, both the New Hampshire-based corporation and the company’s franchise at Pentagon City, to ensure that their discrimination against me, apparently based on race, sex, age, physical handicap, as well as the firm’s retaliation for my filing a complaint about such, will be successful. 

Given her inaction, is it possible that Mrs. Fine is personally biased and prejudiced against me for being an older male Caucasian and being afflicted with “White Privilege”, whatever that is?   Being ‘satiably curious, like the Elephant’s Child, I am burning to know what that report says, and if it supports her actions, or inactions.

The County Attorney, Minhchau Corr, seems to have many of Mrs. Fine’s problems, and, because she is the office chief, she sets the tone and controls the operation of that unfortunate organization.  She has failed in her duties both to supervise her subordinates and to enforce the law.  Mrs. Corr is obviously incapable of handling a team of 14 attorneys and three staff, ensuring their compliance with good legal practice and helping those wronged.

Minhchau Corr

Furthermore, I believe Minhchau Corr, a female immigrant of Vietnamese origin, could be personally biased and prejudiced against me. After all, I am a male Caucasian and, presumably, being of an age to have been a participant in the destruction of her country, along with the murder of millions of its inhabitants. This appears to be not sheer stupidity, but, rather, payback.

COMMENT:  I can better make observations if a few simple questions could ever be satisfied.  But, with the information blackout imposed, I can only make general critiques.  Besides all the foregoing, there are some more questions that need to be asked and answered.

1.      How did the County Attorney’s Office get involved in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission about Planet Fitness?

2.     Why was Juan Torres so obsessed with my use of proper English in addressing possible race discrimination?

3.     Why is no one at the Human Rights Commission supervising him?

4.     Were Minhchau Corr and Adrienne Sakyi Fine appointed to their positions because of sex and ethnicity?

5.     Why hasn’t Mark Schwarz, the Arlington County Manager, responded to my emailed complaint about my treatment at the hands of his underlings?

6.     Are we now dealing with reverse racism, reverse sexism, ageism, and ignoring the Americans with Disabilities Act?  Is that now Arlington County policy?  (After all, Arlington changed its logo because the NAACP thought it racist.)

Old Logo Showing the Facade of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Mansion

New Logo with a More Stylized Version of the Building