I need to cleanse my brain

[needledriver]

My barbershop is a convenient half block walk. Most of the time they have an innocuous sporting event on the TV, but today they had FOX.

I sat, trapped in the chair, as the FOX personalities spun cherry picked facts, half truths, and oily comments in a rapid fire pattern that doesn't even give you time to say "But that's not what happened!" before they careen on to another artfully unfair and biased "report". The barbers chuckle and make comments. They are both nice guys, with Spanish surnames. I look at them in their nice shop in an average strip mall, and wonder what life would have been like for them in 1940, when my house was built. As part of the paperwork, I got to view all the house papers from the beginning.

In 1940, it was illegal to sell the house to Mexicans or Jews. Somehow, I don't think it was conservatives who changed that law.

[midnight]

1. K&R

[TalkingDog]

2. You might send them a nice, sincere note on that... sometimes people

don't think through the process.

[needledriver]

4. The barbershop is definitely

Red territory. Even if the banter with the other customers wasn't clue enough, the row of bobblehead figures such as the "Governator" and Dick Cheney (sleeves rolled up in an aggressive pose) are lesson enough.

OK - I'll give them a pass on the Bill Dana astronaut bobblehead.

[Booster]

3. I long for the day when I go into a place and they don't have

Fox on the tv. What's up with that anyway?

[SheilaT]

5. I have been known to request a TV be turned off

in a public place. I often turn them off on my own. I won't patronize places if they have Fox on, it's that simple.

What bothers me a lot is the presumption that a TV must be turned on at all times, everywhere in public. I don't care what's on, even if it's my own favorite cooking show. I don't need to be watching TV all the time.

Personally, I carry a book or two with me (yeah, real books, no e-reader for this woman!)at all times because you never know when you'll have to wait somewhere.

[needledriver]

6. I can honestly say

(without fear of the cliché police) that some of my best friends are Republicans. Decent people cross the political spectrum. The two barbers are nice guys who give good service. It's just that they exemplify the type of low information voter that votes in exact opposition to his own best interest, in service to a political philosophy which practices the exact opposite of what it preaches.

Is a barbershop a public place? As a privately owned business, they should have the right to put up whatever programming they wish - within the bounds of common decency. Of course the flood of lies and vitriol spewing from FOX violates MY sense of common decency, but I am free to find another barbershop...

[donheld]

8. None of my friends are Republican

Yes I still love my mother, but she's my mother. The rest can go to hell.

[larwdem]

7. tell them

to change the channel and if thy don't like that. You can leave next time. I have walked out of Meany places that fox was on their tv. They don't need my business