rush in al franken's clothing

I forgot to tell you all about the foot-in-mouth experience I had over the weekend. It was awful, kind of.

We went out for dinner with a couple from temple and their kids. We were looking forward to it...they have a daughter Emily's age, and a young son, and they are our age, and Jewish, and from L.A., which I figured meant they were, you know, oovy-groovy, and like minded and kind of funky.

So there we are, eating our chips and drinking our margaritas, and I make some crack about how there are "no Republicans in L.A." And she kind of looks at him. I should have stopped there, I know. But I couldn't believe it. And I said, "Well, surely, you must be like our friend Sam, who is a Republican, but mostly because he agrees with their economic policies."

Nope.

At this point, the door is opened, and I can't close it. For the next 20 or so minutes, we are engaged in dialogue with a man who pretty clearly has gotten most of his points of view while listening to conservative talk radio in the car. I heard about "family values," "bootstrapping," and why Jews are better than "those people." (Strong families and value on education, apparently.) I heard about why Affirmative Action is a joke, why abortion is abhorrent, and why we don't owe anyone anything for something that happened to their ancestors 200 years ago. This Nice Jewish Guy has no issue with his party of choice being completely aligned with the Christian right. He sees it as having no effect on him or his family. Or on the party's policies and practices, I think.

It reminded me of this date that Sharon had once, back in the day. She went out with this guy who, on paper, seemed perfect...he was Jewish, a doctor, liked the sports she liked, all that. Then they went out to dinner (to a nice place, she was excited!) and he proceeded to tell her about everything he thought was wrong with homosexuals, including his opinion that gay people should not be allowed to be teachers. He will forever be known between us as Dr. GayBash.

I really am trying to learn from this experience, and to believe that it would be best to avoid politics in causal settings. But there's a part of me that thinks that maybe I shouldn't change. I mean, what if we had gone on three family dates with this couple, fallen in love with them, and then found out he was a Nazi?

Posted by volfie at April 1, 2004 03:03 PM