The Dagley Dagley Daily

By Janet Dagley Dagley
Covering the world from the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA

ISSN 1544-9114

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Taking a Republican to (virtual) lunch

We have an outreach program here in the Big Apple to welcome our Republican visitors: the Take a Republican to Lunch program, sponsored by Time Out New York magazine and Air America Radio. Here's how it works: you take a Republican, whether a convention delegate, co-worker, neighbor, or passing commuter, to lunch at a participating restaurant. Then dine, discuss, debate, and enjoy a discount on your meal. Tell Air America about it afterward, and if your story is good enough, you might win a prize (a gift certificate, not the Pulitzer).

I hadn't been planning to participate, since I don't know any local Republicans or any visiting delegates, but this morning I decided to reach out anyway and extend an invitation to West Knox Mamma, a Republican consultant who is blogging the convention for the Knoxville News-Sentinel along with the Rocky Top Brigade's South Knox Bubba. Ms. West Knox and I have never met, but we have both been mentioned in the same blog. As West Knox Mamma is literally a mamma with her youngun here with her at the convention, I invited her to bring the baby as well, but quite understandably, both mother and child already have a jam-packed schedule this week and there just wasn't room to squeeze in a social engagement with a yellow-dog-Democrat stranger. I know how it goes when you're at a convention. Maybe next time.

In lieu of an actual in-person, face-to-face sit-down conversation, then, I offer this substitute: a virtual, hypothetical, fictional lunch with a nameless, faceless, generic Republican.

I'd take you to the Tick Tock Diner, Mr. or Ms. Republican, except that this week the Tick Tock has been transformed into the CNN Diner, and even if we could get in, we might run into Jack Cafferty. Disagreeing with most everything Cafferty says is generally the one tiny piece of common ground I can find with Republicans. We could go to another diner if you like, or even some sort of ethnic food, but I must warn you that even though New York claims to offer every kind of food in the world, there are still a few exotic foods you cannot find here:

a) Biscuits and gravy. You can find breakfast biscuits at McDonalds and Burger King, but no biscuits and gravy. There are a couple of places that have it on the menu, but careful: the gravy on those alleged biscuits is brown.

b) Cornbread. Some places do have something they call by that name, but it has, ahem, sugar in it and is therefore corn cake.

c) Khachapuri. Not a Tennessee thing a-tall, but you can't find this Georgian (as in the former Soviet Republic) cheese bread here either, with or without gravy (or sugar).

d) Haggis. You can, however, find a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey if you come around Thanksgiving.

Whatever you decide to eat, stick with it: you can't reconsider because that would be flip-flopping, something your candidate does all the time, at least as much as he accuses our candidate of doing. Just yesterday, for example, your man told NBC's Matt Lauer that the war on terror can never be won, but this morning he told the American Legion that it can and we will.

What's that, Republican guest? There's a fly in your soup? Too bad -- now we'll have to ban all soups, just as your party insists that the solution to the lies in the Republican-backed swift boat ads is to ban all ads by so-called "527" groups. And your steak sandwich is overcooked? OK, I guess we'll have to outlaw meat.

Thanks for offering our waitress a tax cut as a gratuity, but since I'm picking up the tab, I'll leave the tip as well. Most restaurant workers don't make enough to qualify for the tax cuts your party has pushed through in recent years anyway, and they need all the extra nickels and dimes they can scrounge to pay for health insurance -- that is if they can find a company willing to sell it to them.

After lunch, maybe my virtual Republican lunchmate would like to see some sights. Ground Zero? Sure. It looks a lot different now than it did three years ago, and that plume of smoke that rose from the site for months has long since dissipated. Your party's Environmental Protection Agency Director insisted it was safe for us locals to breathe that cloud, except it wasn't after all. You've seen some of the security around Madison Square Garden for the convention, but if you want to see other protective measures that have been implemented since then, you might as well hop on a plane to Wyoming, because your party saw to it that they got 4 times as much homeland-security funding per capita as we did. Say, isn't Mr. Cheney from Wyoming?

Speaking of Mr. Cheney, wasn't that brave of him the other day to admit in public that he has a "gay daughter" -- usually the term is "lesbian," but we know what he means. And I bet it really makes that daughter feel loved to know that while her own father believes the question of same-sex marriage should be "left to the states," that approach would still leave her a second-class citizen without the approximately 1,600 federal rights reserved for heterosexuals. I know, I know -- a lot of Republicans are conservative Christians who insist that their religious biases must be written into the Constitution. That separation of church and state thing that brought our ancestors here from Europe and elsewhere centuries ago -- did Sept. 11 change that, too?

As I walk you back to your hotel -- or actually to the edge of the security zone around the convention -- we might pass some protesters. And there they are: it's the police. No, not the police arresting the protesters. Those police ARE protesters: exercising their right to free speech on their own time by calling attention to their stalled contract negotiations with the city (they've been working without a contract for two years). And look: behind them are the firefighters, also protesting. All this, just to welcome you.

Y'all come back when you can stay longer, Republicans. And be sure to look me up when you're in town so we can do lunch again.

posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:13 PM

31.8.04