Hearts and minds, baby:

The Teamsters picketers were already mad. By the time Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi’s car pulled up to the Steel & Rye restaurant in the picturesque New England town of Milton just outside Boston, one of them ran up to her car and screamed, “We’re gonna bash that pretty face in, you fucking whore!”

“She was scared,” said a Top Chef crewmember who witnessed the incident, which occurred in June while filming an episode for the upcoming 12th season of Bravo’s popular skein, which premieres October 15. “He was screaming at her aggressively and violently.”

The popular TV show had overstepped its bounds, you see, by hiring non-Teamster production assistants or something. A grave sin worthy of abusing the show’s star verbally and threatening physical harm. Padma gets the headlines, but that’s not the worst of it. The Teamsters also allegedly slashed the tires of crew members whose paychecks aren’t likely as amenable to such incidents as those of the show’s highly paid stars. Here’s hoping they’re the production’s vehicles, not personal ones.

Angry that the show had not signed a Teamsters contract and that the production hired local PA’s to drive cast and crew vehicles, the dozen or so picketers from Boston’s Teamsters Local 25 kept at it for hours, raining down racist, sexist and homophobic threats and slurs as staffers came to and left the set that summer day…

John King, Milton’s Deputy Police Chief, said the Teamsters were “threatening, heckling and harassing.” The first officer on the scene, he said, had to call for back-up after the Teamsters “gave the officer trouble.” Reading from the police report, he said the Teamsters were “hostile, swearing, and refusing to let people come in and out. Officers repeatedly tried to de-escalate the situation.” When more police arrived, the Teamsters went to the show’s hospitality tent and “harassed the crew there.” When the officers went there, King said, “A group of them slashed the tires on 14 different cars owned by the crew.”

There’s plenty more at the link, so please go and read. One can imagine this would be somewhat more enticing and universally known story about the abuse a beautiful female star suffered at the hands of a disgusting political protest if it had been of a different strain than Teamster.