I met a real live McCain-Palin supporter last night! In Vancouver! The most liberal pinko commie hippy enclave in a liberal pinko commie hippy province*, where >80% of residents polled said they would vote for Obama if they were eligible!
Sorry for the excitement, but it's my first time.
This guy is a peripheral friend of a friend who occasionally plays poker with us, and boy did he pick the wrong people to argue with! He raised his voice and went all red while three of us (one guy in particular) laid into him. There was much parroting of McCain's favourite phrases (OMG HE WOULD SIT DOWN WITH TERRORISTS WITH NO PRECONDITIONS WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE), and despite saying that he would never vote along party lines just for the sake of it, the first thing he came up with when asked why he didn't like Obama was "well, he's a Democrat".
The best part was how he would just dismiss as "irrelevant" any issue where he knew the McCain-Palin line to be indefensible. e.g. McCain's choice of Palin as running mate: "I don't care about that". Palin's stance on abortion: "let's not talk about that". Palin's stance on abstinence-only sex education: "oh, I'm sorry, I'm supposed to use things like that as a basis for deciding who to support?" (I countered with "what, things like evidence of extremely poor judgement?" YAY!).
An uneasy silence and rapid change of subject ensued. After a brief skirmish about the recent Canadian election ("I never tell anyone who I voted for" - fair enough actually, although it's not as if we couldn't guess), he lost all of his money (NOT to one of the three hecklers) and went home.
The non-heckling money taker asked, fairly reasonably, "when it became obvious that you weren't going to change his mind, why did you keep talking?"
"Because it was FUN!" said two of us in unison.
Hee hee, I am evil.
(I am also a bit ambivalent about blogging this, since I think that one or two of the people involved (NOT the Republican) might drop by occasionally. Post might go *poof!* soon if I chicken out).
*by US standards, but BC is sadly not very left wing by Canadian standards.
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You wanna see real excitement? Come for a visit and I can show you where eggs were thrown at a picture of Obama. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteTonight, over dinner, I heard, among other things:
ReplyDelete"Obama and Mccain... no difference, really"...
"Obama must have surely made serious promises to special interest groups, in order to raise all the money he did raise"...
"Well, I don't think Obama has come out clean about his ties to Ayres"....
"Palin is not dumb, she's just playing a role... it's a strategic choice"...
I was rolling my eyes so much that at some point I feared they were going to get stuck... this is one of those people who really make me mad, i.e., someone who is obviously ultra-conservative, yet will pretend to be "above the fray", equidistant, objective, non-partisan... his ideal politician is Ralph Klein... need I say more ?
ScienceGirl, I am very aware that my encounter was only fun because of the novelty factor. Dealing with it every day would make me pretty angry and frustrated!
ReplyDeleteMassimo, parallel lives indeed! (I did get your IM, but not until 11pm - I am only actually at the computer for about 10% of the time I am logged in, yes I know that's bad but I play my music from it while I'm doing other things!).
The "there's no difference between the candidates" thing makes me sooooo mad. In this case it is even more clear than usual that there are HUGE differences. But even when this is less apparent, I just tell the person to find ONE THING that they care about where there is a difference, whether it's health care vouchers or alternative energies or whatever, and vote based on that. It's better than not voting at all IMHO.
did you see Bill Krystal on The Daily Show? The guy knew what Jon Daily was saying was correct, but just could not admit it. Its crazy!
ReplyDeleteIt was quite something, wasn't it! Obviously a smart guy, but...
ReplyDeleteBTW "Jon Daily" made me laugh... too many vodkas at Madonna last night?! ;-)
I wore an Obama shirt today for halloween - my costume was a Voter!
ReplyDeleteMy students were equally telling me how much they hated/liked my shirt (it's a peace sign with Obama 08 on it). I told them for their test on Monday that they don't get to phone a friend or get "back with me" (and I winked) and there's no talent competition... good thing I had them do evaluations last week. I hope they grow up to be intelligent reasonable human beings.... it's bonus if they are independent or democrat.
OMG I can't believe I did that! I guess my mommy body can no longer handle being up past 10pm...I am OLD!
ReplyDeleteAnon, good stuff! How old are your students?
ReplyDeleteLOL@SM! Hope you had fun!
My students are college sophomores/juniors. I have a bad feeling that half the class will show up for the test with pink Palin shirts (I've seen them on campus... the horror) and the other half will roll their eyes at them. Should be fun to watch. I hope I'm gloating on Wed... I will wear the shirt again.
ReplyDeleteAh well, debate is good and all that...
ReplyDelete