That “he said” wasn’t said to me or for my benefit. But, just hearing that statement in a general conversation sent chills up my spine. It shouldn’t have. I was IN CHAPEL HILL and…..
…. one can’t swing a soap-on-a-rope in Chapel Hill and not hit a messa hard-core washed-in-the-blood uber liberals. In the “body wash era” do they still make soap-on-a-rope? I digress.
It’s Thanksgiving and I “give thanks” I am not a liberal. If liberals “give thanks” who do they give it to? David Price? Harry Reid? Joe Biden? Bev Perdue?
WRAL.com’s dumpster-diving diva Laura Leslie states publicly that “the Universe has been extraordinarily kind….” to her. “The Universe”? Is that Jim Goodmon’s secret code name? She said it folks.
I was well aware of the Chapel Hill guy’s ideological persuasion and that of the others in the conversation. He and I are in a joint business venture in which our contrary points of view do not come into play.
Yes, he is well aware of my extreme right-wing fanaticism. Is there any other kind? Not in “The Southern Part of Heaven” as Jake Wade once described Chapel Hill. I’m not sure they capitalize “Heaven” over there but I do.
Hearing the actual words “I fully support President Barack Obama” hit me as if he had said “I chopped up my grandmother with an ax; then I ate our cocker spaniel for lunch.”. Say whaaaaa? I did an eye-blink double take that went unseen within our conversational gaggle.
We were not discussing politics at all. I never do that when I am in Chapel Hill. My only political comment when in Chapel Hill is that I would despise Conservatives too….. if 1/10th of the crap they believe about “us” over there was true.
Popular discussion topics in Chapel Hill are anything derogatory about anything about (1) NC State, (2) Duke, (3) the North Carolina General Assembly or (4) the mental acuity de jour of a certain Roy Williams. That (4) fluctuates wildly based on the outcome of the most recent game.
Starting a conversation with “what REALLY makes me angry is _______.” usually gets nodding approvals even before you ID your specific grievance. For the record, imaginary indignities work fine. Just be really “sincere”. It’s OK to fake that too.
One can always choose from an overflowing sackful of “bumpersticker topics” related to 1001 political correctness crusades on-going within five miles of Franklin Street. Is there a clearinghouse that regulates what motley group of bedraggled true-believers in XYZ cause get to posture bedraggled and forlornly on what day.
Notice how the same sad souls seem to show up in their made-for-TV photo ops. Notice how the B-roll of any Chapel Hill protest de jour is always a very tight camera shot. The junior intern info-babe assigned to make it appear to be real news uses weasel words like “a sizable” and “crowd” and “gathering” to describe the 8-12 “angry about somethings”? My favorite is when the posters they are holding misspell their cause. That seems to happen a lot.
I never refer to “what Jesse Helms said” about Chapel Hill being “a zoo” because Senator Helms never said it. It was Helms’ soul-mate radio talker, Chubb Sewell, who said it; but sticking it to Helms guaranteed it would have a far longer shelf life. That has proven so.
Several years ago I was meeting a friend (a fellow conservative) at Brixx’s at Meadowmont. In the middle of our lively repartee I looked over his shoulder and noted “well now we know….”
“Know what?” he asked.
“What Janice Joplin woulda looked like if she had lived to be 60.”
There were two baby boomer “earth mothers” grazing across the room. I am convinced that central casting populates Chapel Hill with what the standard stereotypes demand. Go to Disney World and there’s Peter Pan and Snow White and Goofy walking around. These were a pair of old she-hippies eating, I suppose, something organic. Their resident Goofy is, of course, the ever-bombastic Gene Nichol.
Screamin’ Gene is “in the news” again. He is “above the law” apparently because he can yell really loud and has an extensive vocabulary of derisive insults. Gene Nichol is a bloviating boorish foul-mouthed windbag that The N&O loves to promote. Gene and The McClatchy Gang despise every Conservative that walks this planet.
Wonder if those she-hippies at Brixx’s got chosen to be in Bill Barber’s Monday Hoot ‘n Hate Mini-Mobs this past Spring. I bet they did.
It’s almost 2014….. my aforementioned business associate in Chapel Hill is not my only washed-in-the-blood liberal acquaintance. I claim a handful for various reasons but I exercise extreme caution in those relationships. Like having a Gabon viper for a house pet….. you can give it a cutesy name and sing to it but someday you will let your guard down and it’ll bite you and you’ll die a painful death.
I consider Democrat and Republican like I do sports teams. One is simply cheering for laundry (aka a jersey color). Liberal or Conservative is a much deeper commitment. Declaring oneself on that spectrum is drawing a line in the sand. It’s a matter of core values and there is “a difference”.
In my mid 30s I spent six months in a somewhat remote sector of Mexico. It was not an Americanized resort area. I never learned much more that “gracias” and “por favor” but I also never lost patience with the locals for my inability to communicate fluently. It was a “when in Rome”.
I got a killer tan, grew the beard I still have decades later, and developed my current strategy for “getting along in Chapel Hill”.
Don’t pull “a Custer” when hopelessly outnumbered by an angry group of hostiles. No matter what silliness they spout, just smile. Smile, don’t laugh.
…… save the laughing for the drive back home. I always do.
Historically there are two categories of people that are easily led by a succession of silver-tongued demagogues. (1) Those who know nothing…. and (2) Those who have convinced themselves they know everything.
The #2s are historically the easier of the two to scam. Bless their faux-intellectual little bleeding hearts.
