Reply #26: Whoa, who said anything about slumming?

[democrattotheend]

I just said that I was a little intimidated because it was very different from where I grew up, and I was proud that I pushed myself outside my comfort zone. I think part of my fear was coming off as elitist, which I guess I must have from your reaction to my post. I met some nice people today, and for the record, I enjoyed my lunch at Shoney's...it was quite good. I wanted to eat at a locally owned restaurant, but the ones we saw were closed today (we did not see downtown Martinsburg until the end of the day), and we did not want to spend too much time looking for food because we had not finished our packets. So I figured Shoney's was at least a restaurant I had never been to, even if it was a chain.

I sincerely apologize if anything I said offended you. I thought i made a point of mentioning that people invited me in because it was raining and that I met plenty of nice people. Maybe I was a little too negative at some points...if so, I apologize. And I agree with you about bigotry being found everywhere...it was in my home city of Philadelphia just a few weeks ago that I met a guy who told me point blank that he could not vote for a black man. I remember the time in high school when my suburban Jewish friends said that it was hard to imagine living in the same neighborhood as black people (this was shocking to me, having grown up next door to a black family and not realizing that so many of my friends in high school lived in suburbs that were lily white). I guess I should have made that point in the OP, and I apologize if I offended you. I met many nice people today, but did not feel a lot of love for Obama. That's all I was saying.