Of Bigots and Palin

Last night, I went to a Labor [corrected] Day BBQ at a friend of a friend's house.  I was invited mainly, I found out, to be a liberal voice in the discussion.  The discussion, I found, was rather unbalanced-- myself, my friend, and his father (who is Israeli) against three staunch Republicans, their families, and one of the most conservative Israeli's I've ever met (and his family).  When I got there that made it ten against three instead of ten against two.  Yay.

The first thing I was asked, after my name, where I was going to college, and why I didn't want more food than I was taking was why Barack Obama spent 20 years in "a racist madman liar's" church.  Boy, was this going to be an interesting evening.  I tried to defend Obama, saying that what Jeremiah Wright said when he got carried away (like the US government created AIDS) is comparable to what Falwell, Robertson et al say on a rather regular basis-- things like, oh, AIDS and 9/11 are punishments from God.  Neither Obama nor McCain should be tarred by what their men of the cloth rant about.  But I was assured that they were completely different.

Why?  I wasn't given an answer, but I have a hunch it has more than a little to do with skin color.

I also started to talk to the Israeli, but I ended that quick.  Some of my favorite things he said run along the lines of "Obama wants to give all blacks a free house."  Evidence: "All black people want to do that."  More fun insights from this guy included the tidbits of information that "all blacks hate Jews," "all Mexicans are stupid," and "liberal Jews are worse than the Palestinians and the Goyim."  The sad thing was that I legitimately tried to argue with him-- he just told me I'd been brainwashed and stalked off in a rage.  

After that was over, I turned back to arguing with the (slightly more) rational non-Israeli conservatives.  I'm going to be honest, they were winning the argument.  Every point I made, they had a counter point.  I said McCain voted for the war, they said the war was a good idea.  They said the surge was working, I said the surge was working to stop violence because of the Anbar awakening, but that it wasn't accomplishing political goals, and they said I didn't support the troops.  And it went on and on and on-- I couldn't win against them, because the facts that I was marshaling were completely ignored.

Here was the amazing thing though: when I brought up Sarah Palin as an answer to the Obama-inexperience question, they admitted that it was a horrible pick and that they were disgusted with McCain.  And here's the kicker:  they said that they thought it was such a bad pick, if Obama hadn't been in Wright's church [translation: if Obama wasn't black] they'd vote for him.

peace

PS-  here are a couple more pictures from Denver.  From the last night at Invesco.