How's the food?

Is the food worth eating?

I'm an unrepentant liberal, but that doesn't stop me from satiating my innate need for damned good food by patronizing a local barbecue joint. Fox News is always on their TVs. A big-ass old Georgia flag is on the wall.

But the pulled pork plate (with two sides of your choosing) is just this side of awesome.

If it makes you uncomfortable to be in there (like you're worried they might beat you up or spit in your food), don't eat there. Otherwise... even disillusioned folks have the right to make a living.

And yeah, how's the food?

If the food is good, I'd still go.

I wouldn't patronize a place operated by Klansmen or Nazis, but garden variety righties, sure?

Plus,would you really trust a barbecue joint that played NPR?

NTM, who the hell has the time to research the political quirks of every place they could possibly patronize? Even if you did that would probably leave you with nothing but fucking Trader Joe's and Whole Foods or some shit like that.

Yeah, I'd eat there if the sandwiches are good. There are a lot of good eating places here in the south like that- as others have said, if I don't feel physically threatened, I'm there.

There's actually a couple places here we won't patronize because of their excessive proselytizing. I just can't bring myself to give them my money.

Here in New York it's not uncommon to see 'Support Our Troops,' and Gay Pride Rainbow Flags side by side in shop windows. Maybe they figure that everybody's money is green, ultimately.

It all returns to the age old deal of separating the personal prom the political. There are people who's politics I disagree with but who are fine company and people with impeccable politics who I couldn't stand to be around for five minutes. Plus politics shouldn't be bound up with irrelevent cultural BS (right-wingers like NASCAR, lefties drink lattes etc.).

On the other side of it, I once stopped going to a store because it had blistering left-wing articles pasted up everywhere, and even though I can be pretty lefty myself sometimes, I felt like I was being yelled at the whole time I was in there. It felt very bitter and negative.

Interesting question.

The types of evidence you mention, LT, probably wouldn't keep me from eating there. I agree that they're 'garden-variety' righty things. As long as they aren't hate-filled signs and stuff, and it sounds like they aren't, I'd eat there if they had good sandwiches.

I also think that we've been suckered into hating our neighbors far too much. I've been working on a theory about the breakdown of local community due to mass media, which means we don't have to deal with our opposing views face-to-face nearly as much, which means national party-based ideology gets needlessly stronger.

That said, I'm a committed lefty. There's a barbershop in town that I strongly recommended my friend not go to, because their windows were plastered with Bush propaganda -- news articles, magazine covers, slogans. To me, that's different from 'support your troops' stuff. I really regard the Bush Administration as criminal and engaged in the manipulation and subversion of long-prized American values for financial gain and the continued hegemony of the ruling elites. So I really couldn't bring myself to give money to a place that appeared to be directly supporting the activities and philosophy of this Administration.

But country music, prayer groups? Hey, there's nothing wrong with that stuff. Doesn't have to be your cup of tea -- but as long as participation is not mandated by law, we're all going to be OK.

I regularly eat at a chicken place that is owned by the Turkish Grey Wolves. No problem, I just don't mention John Paul Deuce and everything's cool.

Like I said, truly egregious cases (Nazis, Klansmen, ANSWER, Red Sox fans) I'll boycott, but regular conservatives, nah. Plus when we interact regularly with people with different politics it makes dialogue (and thus progress) a little easier.

Once again, I'm going to invoke consumer choice as the basis of my rationale: eating at the sandwich shop is just fine if you go there for the sandwiches. It is unreasonable to punish someone for their politics by spending money elsewhere solely on those grounds. If, however, the quality of the shopping experience is something you value, and your enjoyment of that experience is diminished, as Miko and JanetLand discribed, by ambience created by overtly political decor, I'd suggest you spend your sandwich dollars in a place which caters more to your personal aesthetic preferences. Please don't read this as an attempt to subordinate politics within the realm of the aesthetic, but rather I believe that is the only fair way of evaluating this decision in the context presented, all other things being equal.

and what jommc said

I'd go in uniform.

Never mind the interior landscape. Maybe they've got a kid serving in the armed forces.

Hows the grub and the service? There are places I won't patronize because of the chip on the shoulder attitude behind the politics. But that's the service.

I go to gun shows and get along with the folks just fine. I've been consistenly treated better by right-wingers, terrorists and christofascists than by liberals. Think about that one for a minute.

It's not the belief, it's the behavior. Misbehavior is an entirely different matter entirely. Then I put them out of business, send them to jail or run them out of the county.

My grandfather was dismayed when he found out I was studying Japanese, but he learned to live with it: too many of his friends and their families had been destroyed in the Pacific War. When I moved to Israel he thought I might become a "Jew-boy." In both cases, through correspondence and a bit of prompted research, he came around: he eventually asked me to bring him home a Hiroshige print and a tea set for his lady friend; he eventually predicted I'd become a rabbi, and I planted a tree in his name in ha eretz. What inheritance he didn't give his family (he died before I could bring home his Hiroshige) he donated to his big white Texan church. He was a Republican contributor, and we didn't see eye-to-eye on anything beyond loving my mother and preferring Coke to Pepsi, and I'd be honored to eat anyplace he'd feel comfortable.

A good slice of pie see no color.

There is a Ben and Jerry's franchise in my town that is owned by Republicans.

Just sayin'.

It wouldn't even be a question for me, I don't care how good their food is, I wouldn't give them any of my money.

There are other places that don't get in your face with their politics and their food is just as good, if not better, without the rhetoric (which generally just gives me gas).

Put me in the No column.

So this place has signs reading 'God Bless America' and 'Support Our Troops.' And it has church flyers on the bulletin board and country music on the radio.

And this is a place that couldn't be more right-wing if it tried? Is there something you're not mentioning?

Seriously though, how's the food? I've never really met a leftist that could hit the sweet spot on an Italian Combo.

THE FAR RIGHT KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT BORSCHT!

I would not go, no matter how good the food might be. I also won't buy from online retailers displaying similar things on their websites.

Thanks everyone.

I occasionnally eat at this place, and the food is just meh: you know, sandwiches. Rye bread, roast beef, pickle, whatever. I've just never eaten anywhere so up-front about where they stood for the Right. Gigantic American flag dominating an entire wall and all that.

However, having said this, I've eaten at way-liberal places and not even noticed the rhetoric, almost as if it were a given. Although I think this deli is really oppressive aesthetically, to the point where my shoulders are scrunched up a bit while I eat, it's an interesting experience.

If "they"'re the "enemy," it behooves one to know "them."

LT: I dunno that I'd consider an American Flag and "Support Our Troops" right wing symbols by default. I wear a flag pin on my leather jacket and I do support our troops (but oppose the war). We need to be careful about allowing these things to become theirs when they're everybodys.

If "they"'re the "enemy," it behooves one to know "them."

Well, we're all loathe to admit it but that's where change begins. As a wise man once said "We has met the enemy and they is us!"

There is a flower shop in this town that I used to use on occasion. The closest one to my house.

I quit going there, and probably will never go there again, because they made a big deal about having supplied this or that for Bush's latest inauguration.

I know that this is different than sandwiches. . .I don't know what I would do in your shoes.

If it was as stated and with good food, I'd eat there. Add pro-Bush or hate stuff (GLBT, abortion, race, etc.) either verbally or in the decor and I'd eat elsewhere.

I don't believe "support our troops" is necessarily conservative (I know a lot of liberals, and I don't even think my communist friends would say "fuck the troops, let 'em die!" We all pretty much support them, we just so so in different ways. Some want to support them by winning the quagmire over there, others want to support them by getting them home safe and sound asap.) And the flag? Well, it's EVERYONE'S flag. I think I'd feel sad if I had to think of it as belonging only to one political ideology.

As for the religious stuff... would you notice if a coffee shop had a flyer up for the local unitarian church, or a buddhist meditation group, or an athiest discussion group? I used to get cheesed off by religious postings in businesses like that, until I realized I wouldn't even register comparative non-christian flyers in other places. So I figured I just had to mellow out my own internal biases.

If they had "support the president" signs, something with a definate and undeniable political stance, or anti-liberal/hateful slogans hanging up, it would be different. And I wouldn't go somewhere like that, because I would feel the signs were a direct way of telling me I'm not welcome. But otherwise I just figure they're as entitled to their beliefs as I am to mine, as long as we can all get along and act like adults.

As a wise man once said "We has met the enemy and they is us!"

That was a character in Pogo, wasn't it? Gosh I loved that strip.

I was just recently doing a project in Germany, and was informed that after I moved out of the hotel I would be spending a few days at the client's friend's house. Can I change my ticket, I'm thinking? Then I see the place and its a freaking palatial estate with a completely detached guest house, gardens, stables, the works. My host was quite pleasant as he grilled the delicate little lamb chops in the garden and opened three bottles of great wine at a time for comparison purposes.

Then he announced that he thought that Bush was the best president ever.

I thought about it for a minute and responded: just a drop more champagne, please.

We have met the enemy ....

I have to say, I don't think much of the attitute that anyone who displays your country's flag is automatically right-wing. Is patriotism now only the preserve of conservatives?

No, but in these dark days, this seems highly relevant.