jimmycooper

Am I tolerant? Good question. I've never really thought too much about whether or not I'm perceived as being tolerant. I think I am but maybe I'm not. Hard to say.

You strike me as the type of guy who remembers everything so I'll reference an old post of mine which one could potentially use for making the argument that I'm not. You did call me a bigot in that thread, so it's also a pre-emptive strike.

It was a story about how when I went to a movie screening in NYC with my girlfriend and the people who sat behind us ate bologna sandwiches and Funyuns and that the smell disgusted me. That's all true. I noted my gf's 'white trash roots' which is true. Her parents had a ton of money but her dad didn't start making it until she was in grade school at which point she moved from Mississippi to Dallas. But most of her extended family was spread out across the South and did fit the white trash stereotype. She even has a cousin who is pretty famous actress that many consider to be white-trash.

But even though I referenced her 'white-trash roots', I was with her. I had met a lot of her family, they were all really nice, and there was only one time I can recall ever having thought of their 'white trashness'. We had gotten engaged and were starting to plan for the wedding. Even though I wanted it to be in NYC, I agreed to do it in Dallas so everyone from her extended family could afford to go but insisted that it be black-tie because I didn't want them to fuck up the aesthetic of my wedding with their ugly clothes.

I also said that the people who were eating the nasty shit were white-trash but actually never saw them and could have cared less as to their socioeconomic status. Even though Funyuns and bologna are stereotypical white trash food, they smell just as gross no matter who is eating them. The only reason I mentioned my gf's white trash roots and embellished the white trashness of the people behind us was to prove a point to the anti-liberals in the thread (a couple of whom fit the white trash stereotype) that there are people out there who view them much in the same way they view black people.

I didn't respond to you when you called me a bigot because I was acting like a bigot and I knew that you were right. But I was only doing it for anti-bigot purposes. But maybe it came from somewhere.

So I'm maybe a bit snobby but still pretty tolerant.

What do you think? Am I tolerant or not? And what does it have to do with whether or not I'm liberal?

Enough about me. What about you?

We grew up not to far from each other. You were born in Cali but grew up in Pasadena. I was born in SF and lived in the East Bay before moving to Houston. I lived in Tanglewood and went to a private hs inside the loop. I know that Pasadena is considered to be very conservative. You went to Cal, I went to UT. Both are good schools. It's not easy to get into Cal if you live out of state. I applied but didn't get in yet still managed to get a full ride to UT. You know that in Texas, UT is considered to be a liberal school. Especially when compared with aTm. Cal is considered by many to be the most liberal school in the country.

I may be totally wrong about this but, as politically minded and observant as you appear to be, I imagine that you knew that before you went there and also probably viewed yourself as being more liberal than the people you grew up with. And it's easy to see how a very intelligent open-minded kid from Pasadena, TX could go to a school like Cal with a bunch of Chomsky-loving liberals, be judged, conflate their elitism with liberalism, and become anti-liberal.

But that hasn't been my experience with liberals. Not in the slightest. And even though the Democrats of today are much more liberal than Lloyd Bentsen and Ann Richards, I think we tend to be much more tolerant than the conservatives of today.

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