{"id":56,"date":"2007-09-14T11:20:05","date_gmt":"2007-09-14T18:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/2007\/09\/14\/a-meal-of-prejudice\/"},"modified":"2024-07-02T18:38:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T01:38:34","slug":"a-meal-of-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/grimace-and-giggle\/opinions-on-politics-culture-society\/a-meal-of-prejudice\/","title":{"rendered":"A Meal with Prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dining with colleagues at a local establishment exposed us to the depth and breadth of local prejudice that is running rampant outside what I’ll term the PC zone.\u00a0 (Definition of a PC zone: All places where one must exhibit the trappings of tolerance and social propriety in order to maintain butter on one’s bread, else lose substantial income.)<\/em><\/p>\n

We became\u00a0victim\u00a0to the\u00a0proximity of lawyers and business owners who, thinking themselves somehow “off the record,” began to berate and spew hate-speak against anyone and everyone, from Native Americans to Germans, from Chinese to Irish, from English to Polish to Arab to African, and especially against blacks, homosexuals,\u00a0and women.\u00a0\u00a0Obviously together even though they were spread over several tables,\u00a0these bigots even grinned over at us who\u00a0are\u00a0a group of individuals who\u00a0vary in skin color and sex.\u00a0 It seemed they knew they were being offensive and were totally enjoying themselves.<\/p>\n

Then they began talking down anyone who wasn’t Christian.\u00a0 And, after that, came the vilifying of Catholics, Mormons, Christian Scientists, and other recognized Christian denominations who aren’t particularly well-thought-of by the more fundamental.\u00a0 This wasn’t particularly problematic for anyone at\u00a0our table since most of us are either\u00a0not affiliated with any religion whatsoever, or, if we are, we keep it to ourselves, well-used to this sort of biased speech.<\/p>\n

However, we had, as a group, became very silent.\u00a0 What had been lively, vivacious conversation about progress in our various interests, organizations,\u00a0and occupations became an embarrassed silence — embarrassment for them and their stupidity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the onset of all of this, one of the most locally prominent members of our group who had his back to the rest of the restaurant, glanced around, then\u00a0pulled out a\u00a0small\u00a0box and placed it beside his plate.\u00a0 Lights danced.\u00a0 He then pulled out his cell phone and held it up before him as if it were a mirror.\u00a0 A flash went off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He had a small, coy smile on his face as he tucked his cell phone away.\u00a0 We ate on\u00a0in silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After awhile, the conversation around us lulled and dulled.\u00a0\u00a0 Mr. Prominent switched off the box beside his plate, stuffed it into his suit coat pocket,\u00a0and smiled around the table.\u00a0 “How about dessert?” he asked.\u00a0 Then, “By the way, did you know that, when it comes to recording conversations, we’re a one-party consent state?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dining with colleagues at a local establishment exposed us to the depth and breadth of local prejudice that is running rampant outside what I’ll term the PC zone.\u00a0 (Definition of a PC zone: All places where one must exhibit the trappings of tolerance and social propriety in order to maintain butter on one’s bread, else […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3227,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/3227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}