www.slate.com/id/2108561
Political Poseur Pretending to be a Republican in Blue California. As a political and journalistic experiment, I decided to see how people w ho live in primarily one-party areas would react when faced with a livin g, breathing member of the opposition. I appointed myself an ambassador to bridge the Red-Blue divide and ventured into each side's territory dr essed in the T-shirt, campaign button, and tote bag of the other. I treated each foray as a run-of-the-mill busy dayvisiting malls, stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. I simply lived an active consumer's life while dres sed in a great big Bush or Kerry T-shirt. I avoided any specifically pol itical place, such as campaign headquarters, and any venue where politic s would likely be discussed, such as churches or bookstores. The idea wa s not to see how people would deal with overt opposition but how the mer e existence of a political opponent would be tolerated. And so, campaign logo on my chest, and no small amount of mortal terror in my heart, I s allied forth to see if political freedom would pass the T-shirt test in our two Americas, Red and Blue.
I first visit Newport Beach, Orange County's last bastion of weal thy white country-club Republicans (population, 70,032; I then travel to Bakersfield, the heart of California's agricultural Ce ntral Valley two hours northeast of Los Angeles (population 247,057; To give you a sense of the lion's den I was entering: In 2000, Bakersfield voted 608 percent Republican versus 41 percent statewide. In my Kerry-Edwards shirt, I enter Red America certain that I am on the v erge of inciting to rage a gang of angry yachtsmen who would soon be str apping me and my lefty leisurewear to their mizzenmast. Instead, I encou nter only shades of indifferencehead shaking, "crazy idiot" expressions from older, very wealthy, very white folks in Newport Beach; terse nods from the middle- to working-class citizens of Bakersfield, which seem t o indicate that people here have much bigger things to worry about than whatever is on my stupid T-shirt. In Bakersfield, surprisingly, there's little indication that we are near the eve of an election: I see a total of two campaign bumper stickers, one for Bush and one Kerry, and one el derly lady with a huge Bush button pinned to the jacket of her pantsuit. Despite a recent visit from Dick Cheney, presidential politics seems to have bypassed Bakersfield, and the locals are not about to let a mere T -shirt drag them into the muck. Toward the end of the day, I find one person on whom the election has a d eep hold. Strolling past a sunglasses booth in the mall, I am spotted by a tall and exceedingly thin man in his early 20s, with a buzz cut that makes him look ominously like a shock-therapy patient. As I walk by, he fixates on my shirt and begins to follow me, seemingly mesmerized by the power of my Kerry-Edwards logo. I look back and see him trailing behind me, mouth agape, his eyes glued to my back. Whether the shirt identifie s me as his leader or whether it is his Manchurian Candidate-like signal to kill, I can't tell. I duck into the mall's Starbucks and the spell s eems to break; In Bush-Cheney garb In Bush-Cheney garb Blue In Los Angeles' gentrifying-as-fast-as-we-can Hipstervillaka the Silverl ake/Los Feliz area on the city's eastsidethere are more coffeehouses an d alternative bookstores than churches. Here, aging, unemployed bohemian s with long, matted hair, tinted sunglasses, and affectedly dour express ions skulk along the midafternoon streets as though they have just rolle d out of bed. button, I first stop at Silverlake's ber-cafe, the Coffee Table. "The Table," a s it is known, is the daytime HQ for the area's writing communitythe be d-headed brigades of aspiring indie auteurs who hunch over their laptops , whispering pitches back and forth like state secrets. my T-shirt first makes contact with the locals as the server , a rather prim-looking Asian-American man, double-takes at my unabashed ly partisan display, his smile freezing into a look I can only describe as bracing for me to pull out an assault weapon and open fire. I order, pay, and walk with my Diet Coke through the restaurant, taking a seat on the patio that puts me and my garb on prominent display for the 20 or s o patrons. A wave of distressed glances ripples in my direction, but I r emain unmolested. On e of them, untucked shirt hanging over his jeans, gapes at my shirt and mutters, "Asshole," only slightly under his breath. Next up: Caf Tropical, the gritty Cuban coffee house in old Silverlake. I park my Bush-Cheney festooned car behind a Volvo station wagon decorat ed with a bumper sticker that reads, "Ban war without end. I order an iced espresso and sit beneath a collage of Che Guevara p hotos. Customers accessorize their coffees at the condiment station in f ront of me. Suddenly I look up to see Latino man, who appears to be in h is early 40s, rushing toward me, an enormous grin on his face. Peopl e standing nearby watch our summit with anguished there-goes-the-neighbo rhood expressions. As my new friend leaves, he stands at the front door and, raising his fist, yells, "Viva Bush!" Spasms of horror seize the st ore and pulse out to the community beyond. a two-block stretch of Sunset Blv d filled with boutiques peddling vintage 1970s lunch boxes, summer-camp T-shirts, and baby-doll dresses for grown women. So steeped are its den izens in the culture of irony that almost everyone thinks my shirt is a hilarious joke. As I browse through the Vice magazine store, a pair of g irls giggles at me. One of them comments, "I've never seen that one befo re." A 40ish man dressed in cargo shorts, flamboyant sunglasses, and a L ance Armstrong bracelet sees my shirt and bursts out laughing. Then, as I walk into a wacky gi ft shop, I hear a shriek. The woman behind the counter throws up her han ds in mock horror, "Oh no! she cackles, fei gning horror at my hilarious costume, as if humoring a child on Hallowee n On Vermont Avenue, irony fades into gentrification. A fashionably dressed woman seated at a sidewalk table makes a disgusted face at the sight of me. On line at Psychobabble coffee house, another woman in a blue velou r tracksuit rolls her eyes and grimaces at me with undisguised hatred. R ealizing there are no seats but the one next to me, she stares intently into her cup, avoiding my polluting glance, until another table opens an d she quickly relocates. Out on the avenue once again, I am gifted with my second "Asshole" of the day, this time muttered by a young man with b right dyed raspberry hair. The next day, I head to Brentwood, the lush epicenter of modern limousine liberalism and the hillside home of left-leaning Hollywood. This is whe re activists like Norman Lear and Laurie David live; a few months in res idence here and Arianna Huffington dropped Newt Gingrich like a hot tama le to become a paragon of "progressive" politics. I enter the faux-rustic Brentwood Country Mart, a collection of shops int ended to look like an olde-time barnyard. On the central patio, I pass a woman who looks up from her gaggle of children to see me passing and ex claims, "Ick! A group of teen skater boys waiting on line to buy t he Mart's famed "Chicken Basket" discuss whether Bush will be removed fr om office by the time they turn 18, thus saving them from the draft. Dining nearby is a young girl who looks to be about 6-ye ars-old; she gazes at my shirt with a look so forlorn, I expect to learn that Dick Cheney just stole her crayons. The girl starts to talk, but I can only make ou t "Bush shirt," which she says to her mother as she points my way. I start to wonder what s ort of person I am to inflict this on a poor child. Up in the San Vicente shopping area, things go even less smoothly. At the Coral Tree Organic Caf, a willowy, bookish woman seated a lone glares at me from across the room. When I smile and wave to her, sh e puts on her sunglasses. Driving home, I rip off my Bush-Cheney shirt so I can walk the streets of my neighborhood unjeered at and without terrifying little children. Ref lecting on the sting of being called "asshole" during m...
|
http://csua.com/feed/