Source: Times Union, Albany, N.迷你倉最平Y.Sept. 19--ALBANY -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo's deputy secretary for gaming and racing was identified Thursday as the state official whose e-mail to the New York Racing Association resulted in the Wandering Dago lunch truck being bounced from the Saratoga Race Course just hours later.Bennett Liebman's July 19 e-mail to NYRA President Christopher Kay -- which does not explicitly order the food truck's ouster -- was introduced Thursday morning during oral arguments in a federal lawsuit brought by the controversially named fusion barbecue truck's owners. Brandon Snooks and Andrea Loguidice are suing NYRA as well as the state Office of General Services, which in May denied the Schenectady-based truck's application to sell its food on the Empire State Plaza, citing its name among the reasons for the rejection.Although Liebman's name wasn't mentioned during the court proceedings before Judge Mae D'Agostino, Wandering Dago attorney George Carpinello provided the e-mail's text to reporters outside U.S. District Court."I'm sure that the name of this particular food truck at the track is designed to be self-deprecating, but ... I just believe that people will find the name of the truck both offensive and insensitive, and that the fallout for authorizing this truck will inevitably land on NYRA," Liebman wrote. "Is there any way to at least modify the name of this particular truck? I see this as a problem waiting to blow up."The e-mail was sent at 2:59 p.m. on the first day of the meet; seven hours later, the truck's owners got the bad news from NYRA Vice President Stephen Travers that they'd have to operate under a different name or depart the premises. They left the next morning.Thursday's appearance before D'Agostino ran past an hour, with Carpinello as well as NYRA's attorney Henry Greenberg and Assistant Attorney General Lauren Sprague, representing OGS, framing their arguments amid a barrage of questions from the judge.VISIT THE CAPITOL CONFIDENTIAL BLOG FOR MORE, INCLUDING VIDEO OF PLAINTIFFS' ATTORNEY GEORGE CARPINELLO.Greenberg and Sprague separately contended that the race course and the Plaza, respectively, are "non-public forums" where NYRA and OGS have proprietary roles that allows them to control speech under certain conditions.Carpinello called the suit "a classic First Amendment speech case" and requested a preliminary injunction that would allow the Wandering Dago to sell on the Plaza for the two weeks remaining in the lunch program. And Carpinello noted that while the Saratoga meet is over, planning for 2014 has already begun.He cast the Wandering Dago's name as a classic case of "slur-reappropriation," in which a group that has been the target of discrimination re-brands an epithet to its own proud use -- as in the case of academic "queer studies" or black rap artists who use the N-word.D'Agostino noted there were "different schools of thought" on the reappropriation of racial slurs, and said several times that it was reas迷你倉nable to expect that many people would find "dago" offensive. At one point, the judge said that while she would be insulted if the word was thrown at her as she walked on the Plaza, she might feel differently in the context of its use on a lunch cart.She asked Carpinello if his argument would make it impossible for NYRA to eject someone holding a sign containing the ugliest slurs. Carpinello responded that it would be fine as long as NYRA's action followed a clearly defined policy -- something that he said NYRA lacked in this matter. And in any case, the speech used by the Wandering Dago had been approved by NYRA and its food contractor Centerplate after months of negotiations that ended with the truck being selected for a slot.D'Agostino seemed unconvinced that the absence of a clear policy on acceptable speech meant that anything goes. "That just doesn't seem all that correct to me," she said.But the judge seemed equally concerned at arguments from Sprague and Greenberg that state officials should be the arbiters of what speech should be banned from either site, and the state's contention that the Plaza is a workplace where allowing the truck would risk creating a hostile work environment."It's not a park; it's not a public sidewalk; it's not a 'quintessential public forum,'" Sprague said, using the term of art for a space in which the maximum amount of speech must be allowed. Indeed, she said that OGS would be able to remove someone holding a placard bearing ethnic slurs.Greenberg suggested the suit was nothing more than an attempt by the Wandering Dago to boost its business by making the epithet in its name "a household word in the Capital Region.He said a decision in the Wandering Dago's favor could be the prelude to offensive language showing up on products sold in schools or Little League concession stands.The track, he said, doesn't exist as a free-speech forum but as a commercial enterprise designed to maximize attendance, and that the Wandering Dago's presence imperiled that mission.Greenberg mocked Carpinello's suggestion that there was something nefarious about top state officials being involved in the decision to ban the cart, calling it "a conspiracy theory I think they're trying to hatch." But he conceded that NYRA and Centerplate officials "missed" the potential offensiveness of the truck's name during the negotiation process.In a jabbing rebuttal, Carpinello said Liebman's e-mail was "proof positive" that NYRA wasn't acting in its proprietary role when it sent the Wandering Dago away, but was rather succumbing to pressure from an official with regulatory power over its operations.D'Agostino said she would make her decision as soon as possible.Asked about the coincidence that the judge's name includes the word at issue in the case, Carpinello said, "God works in mysterious ways."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) Visit the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) at .timesunion.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存
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