Walmart Isis cake cooks up a storm
The American supermarket chain Walmart apologises after baking a cake for a disgruntled customer featuring the Islamic State flag.
Stung by his local Walmart’s refusal to make him a cake with the confederate flag design, Chuck Netzhammer asked the supermarket to bake him a cake sporting the Isis flag.
Walmart staff in Slidell, Louisiana, agreed to his request, seemingly unaware that Islamic State is more synonymous with brutal beheadings of “infidels” than fondant fancies.
Mr Netzhammer had been incensed when Walmart said it could not bake him a cake with the confederate flag, alongside the words “Heritage Not Hate”.
Charleston shootings
The southern battle flag has been at the centre of controversy since the 17 June Charleston shootings of nine black churchgoers, allegedly carried out by Dylann Roof, who had posed for pictures holding the flag. Walmart is no longer selling selling “confederate flag-related items promoting the flag’s image”.
Mr Netzhammer took to YouTube (video above) to make his feelings known, saying: “I attempted to get an edible image cake printed with the confederate flag image on it at Walmart. It was denied. The next day I had them do the same for the Isis battle flag image I brought to them. They cheerfully did it. and sold me my Isis cake.
“Isis is beheading Christians, selling little girls into slavery, and is currently a terrorist org at war with the United States.”
Walmart apologised for baking the $20 cake, saying it had made a mistake and that a member of staff “didn’t recognise what that image was and what it meant or it wouldn’t have been made”.
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The company is not the first to refuse to bake a cake on ethical grounds and then find itself in hot water. In May, Ashers Baking Company in Northern Ireland was found guilty of discrimination for being unwilling to bake a cake with a pro-gay marriage theme.
Last month, Austrian baker Thomas Keinbauer courted controversy when he made a cake with a design showing planes embedded in buildings, modelled on the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York.
The two towers were meant to represent Austria’s main parties, and he said he had wanted to register his domestic discontent with politics, not offend Americans.