Around Halloween, I donated money to Howard Dean's campaign and received a big orange "Bush Scares Me" button as a token of thanks. I'd been wearing it for the past week, and then, this morning, for some reason, I decided to remove it and replace it with the slightly beat-up "Howard Dean For America" blue button that has been pinned to my purse for several months.
That was a good decision, in hindsight.
I just got back from a lunch run to the Ferry Building (which is absolutely gorgeous inside and has some really cool, if somewhat expensive food shops — anybody in or near San Francisco should definitely check it out!). In the ten minutes I was there, two people commented on the pin. One, a clerk working in the ferry gift shop, gave me the thumbs-up sign and said "Go Howard Dean!" The other had quite a different response.
The other was a not particularly exceptional looking white man in his 50s. The undistinguished gentleman took one look and said, "Howard Dean, huh? Naw. Bush, baby! Four more years! And he'll win, too, thank G*d!"
I didn't react at first (trying to restrain myself) and then after a few seconds I responded with "Thank you for your opinion, sir." in what was probably a fairly icy tone of voice.
"Well, I like Bush a lot. He's the best thing to happen to this country."
"Really? What do you like about him so much?"
"Everything. He's done a lot of great stuff."
"Really? Specifically, what has you done that you like?"
"Well, everything! He's been great for the economy, Iraq... everything!"
"Really, you think Iraq is going well? But it's less stable than it was before! Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Saddam's gone, but —"
"Ah, don't believe all that stuff that you see in the news. They're making it sound worse than it is. I get my news from people that know what's going on!"
"Oh. Where do you get your news from?" (I suspected at this point I already knew what he was going to say.)
"FOX News!"
At this point I was, I think, speechless.
"Oh, but that's not the only place. I have other sources on the Internet. You can't trust newspapers. The Chronicle, that's not news!"
I agreed with him that the Chronicle wasn't a great newspaper, but I had to do it to his back, as, perhaps bored, perhaps afraid of actually having to defend his knuckle-dragging views on the world with sources and logic, he walked away down the hall.
These are the kind of people that run our country. Angry white men in their late middle age who get all their news from Fox, and appear to have great difficulty listening or even being polite.
This is no way to run what is supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world.
Feh.
(Man, if I'd been wearing the "Bush scares me" pin — maybe he would have hauled off and punched me! And then I'd be able to sue for millions! That would have been so cool!!!!)
Edit: I remembered after writing this that there was a bit more to the conversation (and believe it or not, there were a few more rounds of him making a statement and me asking for more info). I finally at some point said, "It must be nice to be so sure of your beliefs," and he responded with, "Well, you gotta go with what your heart tells you."
