Advantage chicken

The hip new political metaphor, according to Chuck Todd of NBC News, is Starbucks Nation vs. Chick-Fil-A Country. This is another way of saying that more rural voters than urban voters will go to the polls this election cycle. The scenario favors Republicans.

May this old California/Maryland liberal make a confession?

I never liked Starbucks. Too pricey (especially for the grub), and they don't let you commandeer an entire booth for your books and computer and stuff.

The next sentence contains the most politically incorrect words ever found on this blog. I've become a semi-regular Chick-Fil-A customer. To be specific: About once a month, I take the train out to the Chick-Fil-A in Hunt Valley, a restaurant run by outrageously dorky white people. It's the epicenter of honkiness in the Western hemisphere.

Let's admit it: Part of the reason we go to certain restaurants is to acquaint ourselves with the stereotypical trappings of a foreign culture. You go to a Mexican restaurant expecting to hear the Spanish language (or at least the accent), and you want to see tiled floors and tiled bathrooms and bullfighting posters and, well, lots of other Mexican stuff. You go to a Greek restaurant because you want to be around lively people who say "Opa!" a lot. You go to Buca di Beppo because you want the Pope room, and you want to feel that somewhere nearby there are a couple of guys in dark suits figuring out how to whack the entire Tattaglia family.

As awful as it sounds, I don't enjoy going to the Chick-Fil-A near my home. That one is staffed by a lot of black people who are very competent, very friendly, and very dull. They just don't make me giggle. No, when I wolf down a chicken sandwich and waffle fries, I want to do it while people-watching the hilariously pale. Their antics perpetually challenge me to keep a straight face. The women wear perfume and dresses and sky blue sweaters, and their hair is always the color of safflower oil. The men sport the kind of haircuts men got in the 1950s, and they say God Bless a lot. On my last visit, they were talking Wheel of Fortune. And football. And Intelligent Design. And Ronald Reagan. Yep, good ol' Ronald Reagan: Now there was a real president. He finally got rid of the deficit before that damned Dimmycrat Bill Clinton ran it up sky-high again.

Listen closely: That's polka music playing in the kitchen. Music with yodeling. They dance to it. They stay after hours, crank up Roll Out the Barrel, and they dance.

I keep wondering: What do these people look like when they orgasm? When the eruption nears, do they go into Ned Flanders mode? "Woah! I'm cum-diddly-umming!"

Now, one must be careful. Exposing oneself to such an environment more than once a month might be dangerous. But every so often, one seeks the exotic.

Added note: Response to this post has been amusing. Apparently, I am now black. Although I'm happy to take this as a compliment, one psychotic commenter went so far as to call me a "jigaboo." And I've been removed from the blogroll at The American Patriot (a paleocon site whose existence was previously unknown to me) on the grounds that I am a black racist.

Some ofays just can't take a joke.