HTV’s "pro-veterans" segment is patriotism to some, hate speech to others

The tale spread quickly through Terrebonne Parish, of disrespect and foul words directed at a “highly decorated veteran” by a convenience store clerk.

For most locals, word came from a trusted television personality, HTV owner Martin Folse, during an hour-long rant on his Monday night “Bayou Time.” Unvetted, relying on a single source initially unidentified, the story grew legs, chafing sensibilities of veterans and their many supporters, while frightening other people.

Folse related information he said was told to him by Dr. Phillip McAllister who, at around 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 4, purchased fuel at the Road Runner on La. Highway 311 at St. Charles Boulevard and walked inside the Houma store, asking clerk Sadar Sikhada for a tin of snuff, resulting in a cross conversation that ended with the unfortunate language.

The segment and the discussions migrated to Facebook and YouTube, with postings of Folse’s show viewed by thousands.

As promised by a caller to Monday’s show, 40 flag-waving, sign-wielding veterans and their supporters showed up Wednesday morning at the convenience store; honks and air-horn blasts from passing cars and trucks were their soundtrack.

The store’s owner closed Wednesday. He expressed fear that things might go too far, that someone could get hurt.

A sign taped to the store’s door read, “Say No To Racism; Long Live United States.”

“All of the veterans of the United States were insulted,” Folse said during Monday’s broadcast.

The clerk, Folse told viewers, “called all veterans ‘f—ing a—holes.”

“It goes to show you their mindset, but they are right here in Terrebonne Parish,” he said. “I would urge anyone who has a parish vehicle or who is fueling up at these places, the parish president, I would urge anyone whose employees fill up at any of these stations, especially the one at (La. Highway) 311 and St. Charles (Boulevard), don’t fill up there anymore. If you fuel up there, I won’t vote for you. If they can treat our veterans this way, then you know where that money is going.”

There was no mistaking the “they” Folse refers to are convenience store owners or operators of Middle Eastern descent.

But in the case of the Road Runner station, Folse was dead wrong.

The clerk is not Middle Eastern. He is a 25-year-old student from Nepal – next door to Mt. Everest in Asia – whose parents are Hindus.

The owner of the store is a former LSU student who did an internship at Tulane University, whose family brought him to the U.S. when he was 4-years-old. They hail from Vietnam and are Buddhists.

Not, as journalism ethicists and civil rights advocates point out, that ethnicity should matter at all.

Folse’s “Bayou Time” diatribe, they maintain, was nothing less than hate speech, appealing to the worst fears of locals.

The anti-Islamic flavor was evident at the Wednesday demonstration as well.

James Sargent, an oilfield business owner who served his country from 1962 to 1966, was among protesters holding a sign that read, “This store does not support veterans.”

A few words with Sargent exposed deeper resentments.

“I am doing this because I do not support un-Americans,” he said. Asked precisely what he meant by the phrase, Sargent wasted no time with his answer. “These people. Muslims. Let’s get to the point here.”

Told that the people from the store are not Muslims, Sargent shrugged.

“OK, they’re from the Middle East, that works for me.”

Such responses – amply evident through posts on Folse’s Facebook page, are alarming to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Islamic-American Relations, this nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group.

“What we see time and again across the country is that a tiny minority of anti-Muslim bigots pick up the rhetoric of others, and the misinformation of others, and use it to carry out violent attacks,” Hooper said.

A shooting at one California mosque and a powder-laced threat letter at another, a firebomb attack on a mosque in Arizona, Hooper says, are but a few of the cases that his group has logged.

“In a lot of these cases what we see is that the individuals who commit them are a reflection of the anti-Muslim sentiment in our society, and that is a direct result of programs like this, that light the fuse that later turns into some act of violence down the road,” said Hooper, who viewed the entire show on HTV’s website. “It is wildly irresponsible. This is a free country, and you are free to be an anti-Muslim bigot, but that doesn’t make it right.”

One Facebook post suggests that Middle Eastern gas station owners could decide all at once to blow up their stores and their tanks, causing death and destruction throughout the nation. Another social media message tells an entirely foreign version of the story. The store employee, it states, demanded that the “highly decorated veteran” remove his medals before entering, an inflammatory falsehood.

All this was possible, Hooper and other advocates say, because Folse needlessly opened the ethnic and religious door.

Most of the veterans and supporters interviewed at the protest did not spout anti-Islamic sentiment.

Roger Songe, president of the local Disabled American Veterans chapter, said the cause and protest were appropriate, as a way to stand up for veterans.

But there were tense moments. A man who used the station’s automated pump to buy gas with a credit card was heckled; a protester took cell-phone photos of the car’s license tag as it left the lot.

Until Wednesday night all viewers heard was Folse’s translation of what allegedly occurred at the store. Folse played an audio recording on last night’s edition of “Bayou Time” of an account by McAllister, a prominent Houma neurosurgeon, who served as an Airborne Ranger and then a Green Beret from 1975 to 1983.

“He gave me a different type of snuff than that which I asked him for, the long-cut snuff,” the voice of a calm and collected McAllister states. “At that time, he had already rung up the snuff and became very upset with me that I had not given him more specific information at that time. It was apparent that he was very upset, at which time I told him it was fine, that I would do without the snuff and walked out of the convenience store. He told me that I was a blanking a—hole; I reminded him that he was able to speak to people that way because of veterans who had sacrificed much for this country.

“He informed me that I was a blanking a–hole and that all U.S. veterans are blanking a—holes.”

McAllister did not return calls from The Times made to his home, his office, nor did he respond to messages given to him by Folse that the newspaper wished to talk to him directly.

Folse reiterated a directive to viewers to ask convenience store clerks who appear “foreign” for proof of citizenship.

Folse, an ardent supporter of veterans, chose to initially relate the story on the air the night before Veteran’s Day.

But there was no “alleged.” There was no serious attempt at that time, Folse acknowledged, to get the clerk’s side of the story. Middle Eastern store folks, Folse said, don’t like him visiting because of his station’s “sting operations,” taking video of arrests for illegal synthetic marijuana that some, in an entirely different part of town, have sold.

One of the arrestees, Folse commented while video from last year played, looked as if he wasn’t born in Terrebonne Parish.

As he discussed the illegal drugs, wiring of money to Yemen to finance terrorism and other issues relating to stores other than the Road Runner on St. Charles Boulevard, Folse kept video showing on a background screen depicting that gas station.

At the end of the Monday night segment, while talking with a viewer, Folse said of Middle Easterners, “They are going to have to change their faith.”

THE TV HOST’S STORY

The protest, Folse said in a Tuesday morning interview and on his Facebook page, was not his idea.

“I never told people not to go there,” he said.

The story of what happened to McAllister, Folse said, did not originate with him but on a Facebook posting. McAllister then came to him with the complaint, Folse said.

“He said, ‘The guy was Middle Eastern. I know my people. I was an Army Ranger, I have been around foreign countries, I have friends who are Muslims,’” Folse said, relating words he said were McAllister’s. “McAllister told me definitely foreign descent, he saw it to be a mixture, he thought Middle Eastern.”

Why, Folse was asked, did he bring ethnicity into his segment at all? A Caucasian reporter asked what Folse would do if it was he, rather than someone he termed a “foreigner.”

“I would have went after you just as hard,” Folse said. “I don’t care what color the clerk was or what nationality the clerk was. When you say what you said about U.S. veterans and my grandfather was in a metal helmet in World War I, I don’t care if you are an American white man behind that counter.

“I am just telling people be careful where you go, know where you are spending your money,” Folse said, noting that Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter last year said money from one of the raided stores had been sent to Yemen. “I didn’t say don’t go to Middle Eastern stores. But the money is going to Yemen from at least one of them. That money is going to be used against us at one time or another … Muslims are not bad people, but there are extremists among them. We just don’t know who they are. I was sort of rolling this show into one.”

Folse said he did not learn until Tuesday that the owner of the Road Runner is Vietnamese.

Folse said he made efforts to contact the owners of the gas station since his initial report, but was unsuccessful.

“I went to a Vietnamese leader and somebody who would be involved in the business,” said Folse, who came back with no guarantees that either of his contacts knew the owner.

THE CLERK

Dressed in a Linkin Park T-shirt and leather sandals, Sadar Sikhada stood outside the Road Runner store Tuesday, having a civil conversation with Houma American Legion member Gerard Ledet, who came by himself to see what all the fuss was about.

“What is a veteran, I do not know this word,” Sikhada said. “They do not have this word in my country.”

Sikhada admits he spoke harsh words to the doctor, providing a far more detailed version of the struggle over snuff than offered in McAllister’s pre-recorded version.

The clerk, who studies civil engineering, is from Nepal, a south Asian nation with a largely Buddhist and Hindu population. His parents are Hindu; he himself does not ascribe to any particular religion.

Sikhada said he is used to people looking at him judgmentally, trying to piece together his nationality. It makes him uncomfortable but he usually ignores it.

“I know there are people here who hate me because of my face,” he said, then related his version of the incident with McAllister.

“He came to my store and when he came inside he saw me and said, ‘Give me Copenhagen straight snuff,’” Sikhada said. “There is no Copenhagen straight snuff; there is Copenhagen long cut or Copenhagen snuff. There is no Copenhagen straight snuff. He slides the card, I gave him the whole roll. The receipt did not come out, I said you want Copenhagen straight snuff? So I sold him the other, Copenhagen long cut. He said that is not the right one. He said in America there is two kinds of tobacco, long cut and snuff. OK, I know about that, too. I said, ‘You want Copenhagen snuff, I will give you Copenhagen snuff. He said people from outside, or people from Middle East, don’t know how to serve Americans. When he told me that I got mad. I am not even from the Middle East. He was on the way to leave. He left the Copenhagen on the counter and he had already slide his card. I told him if you think so you are a f—ing a—hole. That is all I said. He said stay away from me and I say again you are a f—ing a—hole. And that is all I said.”

The owner of the store, who has asked not to be identified by name, said that Sikhada had worked for him at a store he owns in Mobile and was a model employee.

“Sometimes he gets upset by people acting mean, acting like racists. I have told him to ignore the ignorance,” the storeowner said. “I have experienced the same thing when I have been there.”

When the owner learned of the incident, he said, the clerk was reprimanded. He was also transferred to another store, out-of-town.

“I told him you cannot treat a customer this way,” the owner said. “I understand if somebody is mad about being called a name. But why on the television show did they say we are Middle Eastern? Why did they make it look like we sell drugs, when we have nothing to do with that, showing our store the whole while they talk about it?”

JOURNALISM ETHICIST

That tactic, along with an utter failure to provide both sides of a story, troubles Kelly McBride, a journalistic ethicist and vice president for academic programs at the Poynter Institute in Tampa, one of the nation’s most renowned journalism education and in-service training programs.

“At a fundamental level there are accuracy problems,” McBride said. “He is breeding xenophobia by suggesting that the store would be contributing to a terror network. It is absolutely irresponsible to suggest that, and it is called racism. There is a basic fairness problem.”

That Folse is the trusted television icon who delivers information on hurricanes to viewers, giving them information to help them decide whether to leave or stay, makes the situation more troubling to McBride, when the potential consequences of providing misinformation are weighed.

McBide questioned what if Folse told viewers there was no danger from a storm, that they could stay home, and they did, even though the information was bad? What if he told the people the storm was coming and they spent money on supplies or uprooted even though the information had not been checked out?

But Folse dismissed McBride’s assessment, asking where she was from.

After learning that she is in Tampa, he said, “Well, she obviously doesn’t know our culture here.”

Journalism, he said, is changing, suggesting that Fox News and CNN have forged models of freely venting opinion.

“‘Bayou Time’ is more like a Bill O’Reilly-type show,” Folse said, explaining the lapse in seeking input from more than a single source. “CNN gives their opinion.”

Folse said he does not fear his misinformation creates a credibility problem for him, standing by all that is said because it is in the name of supporting veterans.

His passion – and the tone of the show – were evident in a Facebook post Folse put up an hour before the Monday show aired.

“Watch HTV tonight at 6 p.m.,” the post states. “ I will honor our veterans and I will also warn you about some disrespect being shown to our vets from a man of Middle Eastern descent at one convenience store. Yes, I know. We are supposed to be unbiased in our reporting. Are they being unbiased when convenience store synthetic marijuana and bath salt sales are being shipped to terrorists oversees. If they want to live here, so be it. But when you disrespect our vets, which include my dad, I will rip you another a—. It’s time people. Drive to American-owned convenience stores and not stores that ship their sales to Yemen – facts verified – and other terrorists who are taking over our convenience stores. Chances are that the pack of cigarettes or the gas that you buy will be used to kill you and your family one day. If you think that I am sensationalizing, then so be it. It’s time people.”

On Wednesday’s show, Folse took an approach less shrill from his initial report; telling viewers it was not his intention to lump the St. Charles store in with those where synthetic marijuana was sold.

Protesters gather Wednesday outside the Road Runner store on the corner of La. Highway 311 and St. Charles Boulevard in Houma after hearing on HTV’s “Bayou Time” that a store clerk allegedly directed a slur at military veterans.

JAMES LOISELLE | THE TIMES