Diner Dash

It’s been another nasty day: the sliding stock market, the increased slime of the Republican campaign for the presidency, and basic work tensions.

So I decided to go out for lunch. I chose a diner in a white working class area near my office. I have choices here: I can go Latino, African American, or white. I wanted to eavesdrop on conversations and figured the diner would be a perfect place to put my finger on the pulse of a local community.

Fox News was on. The issue of Proposition 8 was about to come up. That’s the California ballot initiative that would reverse the California Supreme Court ruling that under that state’s constitution, same sex marriage must be acknowledged.

The lead was something like this: elementary school teacher hosts field trip of her students to her lesbian wedding. Nothing like San Francisco!

However, when the story actually aired, it was very different. A parent of a student in the teacher’s class decided to take her own child to the teacher’s wedding. This is not a field trip. This is parental discretion. How that got distorted into a what sounded like a field trip of the entire class to the wedding, well, it’s Fox. Need I say more.

I was pissed. I overheard a conversation between two very assertive white men, mid-thirties, who were talking about how dangerous Obama was. The third man was hesitant, and was trying to focus their attention on the inexperience of Sarah Palin.

Despite my best intentions, I jumped in like a mad woman: Sarah Palin has no knowledge, no education, and no ability to be the president of the United States. Haven’t we had enough with stupid presidents? That’s how we got here.

These men looked at me like I was crazy, and I was old enough to be their crazy mother, too!

At times like this, I wish I had the composure of Barack Obama.