Z's Memorial Day afternoon,,,who knew I'd be blogging about my day?

..but I did want to blog about it because it shows so perfectly a couple of mindsets I'll never agree with.

First off, it was a lovely, absolutely perfect afternoon in a friend's backyard...hot dogs, burgers, and all the fixings, but REALLY good...watermelon,, carrot cake, you get the picture...NICE. I knew about four people out of 25 or so.

A fellow who turned out knows a very dear friend of Mr. Z's and mine happened to sit down next to me and we realized we both knew this friend very shortly into our conversation so we had something in common right off the bat......and he was fascinating. We talked about many things but the thing that got my dander up was when he told me about his granddaughter who's 8 years old and who was in her public school when they showed a film on Ruby Bridges the other day, Bridges being the little black girl whose parents were encouraged by the NAACP to enroll her into a segregated school in New Orleans in 1960 (Rockwell caught the moment in the painting I've published above). The film they showed these second graders showed this poor black child being taunted by whites and parents pulling their kids out of classes, etc. You can imagine the message his granddaughter got, and she relayed it quite eloquently over dinner that night...how Americans are mean and don't like black people and on and on about this poor little black girl trying to go to school.

This man thought that it was not something we need American children seeing until they're able to grasp things in context and learn the good about this country before they learn the bad, which they should learn about in high school or college but not the formative elementary school years.
We spoke about a lot more, this man's career, the death of his wife, his kids, etc., but I had one ear on the liberal guy, Don, who lives next door to my hostess.

Don was a pip (and no, I don't mean he sang with Gladys Knight!). He came to our table and started schmoozing with some of the ladies near me while I was in conversation with the other guy. Don started talking about how anybody could possibly vote for Meg Whitman for Governor of California when she's very rich and "obviously is just another Republican buying this election" and he was waxing eloquent about Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown who's running for Governor, too, on the basis of his being Pat Brown (previous governor)'s son....that seemed to be the pedigree Don thought was enough to run California.

He then went into a tirade about Dick Cheney, information of which I haven't ever even heard of....and I kept ignoring him as he droned in my ear and I tried to listen to the guy next to me, who WAS interesting but you know me and politics... I SO wanted to argue with Don but I couldn't (God is good :-)

Don then went into how he's a Jew and he feels that as much as he loves Israel he really can't support most of what Israel does because he feels the Palestinians are so right and so sad and so innocent............and the Jews are so rough on them. (!) OH, did I WANT TO TALK? Then, I heard him say he'd just been on a plane where he spoke to a muslim who owns something like 58 Dominos Pizza shops and what a nice guy he was and how he told him muslims don't want to kill Jews and that the Koran never says they should. "Nowhere in the Koran does it say to KILL JEWS" he says, but he admits he'd like to look more into that. (Good, Don, you do that). Okay, now I'm tingling with desire to say something but I can't interrupt the man telling me about his life, right? :-) At one point, I DID say "OH, you are all so lucky I'm not getting into your conversation!" (Don had a group of conservative women and one man as a captive audience because they're really nice people who were afraid to venture any alternative viewpoint!) But, I then turned back to my conversation......

This guy Don was SUCH a nice guy but you could just hear he's full of Olbermann and CNN and hasn't paid any heed to a viewpoint other liberal in his whole LIFE. And I so didn't want to get into it at my friend's barbecue!

Well, I did enjoy my conversation but it wasn't easy with one EAR ON DON! ....and not feeling I should really speak up. But, I wanted so badly to say "Right, Don, Muslims don't want Jews dead, the Koran doesn't tell us that, Israel's wrong and Palestinians are right, and Jerry Brown would be a perfect governor because you liked his dad." OH, and I forgot...Don was telling these people he did go to a party full of Republicans "and they're so vociferous on every subject about their own views"..."and one of the guys said Obama was really wrong about one thing; he didn't put all the bankers in PRISON!" Don seemed thrilled with that encounter..."now HERE is a REPUBLICAN I COULD LEARN TO LIKE!" Oh, cool, Don, glad you approve of THAT Republican.
z