Washington Post metro reporter Sophia Solano published a story online Thursday morning (and likely to air in Friday’s paper) fawning over the far-left weirdo who chucked a Subway sandwich at law enforcement officials on August 10 in downtown Washington, declaring him “a resistance icon” and “symbol” of the city’s “resistance” to President Trump’s push to bring down crime.
Solano’s piece was giddy in showcasing the miscreant having turned into a t-shirt, mural, and even his sandwich being used as bars in place of the red stripes for Washington D.C.’s flag.
Her headline and subhead set the table: “How a thrown sub made ‘Sandwich Guy’ a resistance icon in Trump’s D.C.; A DOJ employee was fired and charged with a felony after chucking a footlong at a federal agent. Now his likeness is a symbol — and for sale on T-shirts.”
Her lede was equally dumb: “Where protest movements take hold, symbols of resistance soon follow. In Washington, since the Trump administration has taken over the city’s police force and ordered the National Guard to patrol the streets, that symbol has taken the form of a person who flung a footlong sub. His name, colloquially, is ‘Sandwich Guy.’”
She then dropped the guy’s name (Sean Charles Dunn) and that he was axed by the Justice Department for his actions, which she gushed over as “the lob heard ’round the District.”
After mentioning his felony charge and that both he and his attorney wouldn’t comment, Solano pivoted to this supposed cultural heartthrob: “A week after the sandwich was slung, Dunn’s likeness has popped up around the city and on social media. Memes and art have flooded D.C. accounts. Protesters have held Subway sandwiches to the sky at protests in a symbol of defiance. And, yes, you can now buy a shirt.”
She finally dug into the art that’s allegedly sweeping the capital city, starting with giant posters of Dunn “plastered on buildings in Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Union Market and other popular neighborhoods.”
Predictably, she found academics to give it two thumbs up and speculated Dunn should have lobbed a half-smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl instead (click “expand”):
This time, one poster that nods to Sandwich Guy, plastered on buildings in Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Union Market and other popular neighborhoods, spoofs street artist Banksy’s “Flower Thrower.” The piece, originally seen in the West Bank, depicts a man winding up his arm to throw a bouquet of flowers instead of, say, a grenade. Around D.C., the flowers are replaced by a hoagie.
“Whoever came up with that transposition, I mean, that’s a brilliant piece of street art,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist at the University of Baltimore specializing in graffiti and street art. “And it will be one of several. When somebody writes the history of this period, that will definitely be one of the iconic images that comes out of it.”
To Ross, the incident was a “perfect storm” for virality. (The only detail that could have improved it, he said, was if Dunn threw a food more closely associated with D.C., like a half smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl.) For one, there was the irony of Dunn’s employment — not only in a federal office, but for a federal criminal agency, he said. There was the felony charge, which he called an “overcharge,” that heightened public attention.
And perhaps most importantly, there was the fact that the incident was textbook slapstick: a thwacking sandwich, a flat-footed police chase, a close-up of the discarded projectile, still enclosed in a Subway wrapper.
“Let’s be honest,” said Rochester-based artist Adam Goldfarb, “nobody wants to waste a sandwich. But looking at this administration, the cruelty, the corruption, the disregard for basic democratic values and societal norms, it feels like, so often, there’s nothing we can do. So I totally understand this, ‘We just need to do something,’ and you’ve got a sandwich in your hand.”
Goldfarb, who lived in the D.C.-area for 15 years, is now selling shirts he designed as a tribute to the incident. On one, a cartoon hoagie, over the word “resist,” wears an eye patch. He wanted to create a character “who you could tell had seen some things and had had enough.” He hasn’t sold any yet.
He closed with another commie artist seeking to make a quick buck who’s “sold over $4,300 worth of merch on her Etsy site, including T-shirts, tote bags, pins and digital prints” and “donated that money to Miriam’s Kitchen, Capital Area Food Bank, Food Not Bombs DC and other area organizations.”
“To [Lorraine] Hu, the design is resonating with people because of ‘how surreal and objectively not harmful the act of throwing a sandwich is,’” Solano added with Hu telling her this “innocuous symbol of a sandwich” has left D.C. residents feeling something greater.
This isn’t the liberal media’s first rodeo fawning over an innocuous leftist’s childish antics. In 2017, they were ebullient over Loudoun County woman Juli Briskman flipping off President Trump while on her bicycle. Because Northern Virginia is an out-of-touch, dark-blue dystopia, Briskman parlayed this stunt into elected office.
Upon her election, she received hero’s welcomes on CNN and MSNBC.
But when it came to “Let’s Go Brandon” bit, CNN wasn’t having it.