MY FUN INCIDENT AT THE SUPERMARKET
While I was hobbling around in the local Safeway store yesterday, I got to the checkout line just ahead of a mother and teenage daughter who were obviously members of a particular local Christian fundamentalist church; you can tell by the way the members dress. In this case, the mom was wearing a kind of wrap or scarf around her head, and the daughter had her hair pulled back in a tight bun. Both wore long, plain dresses with long sleeves.
Anyway, as the checker was working at my groceries, I couldn't help but notice this mother and daughter frantically running from one checkout aisle to the next, turning copies of Style and Cosmopolitan magazines around so the front covers, depicting cleavage and form-fitting dresses, wouldn't show.
It was just too funny, and I couldn't resist... I approached the mother and said, honestly, "I understand exactly what you're doing. I do that with books by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter every time I go to Barnes and Noble." (I actually DO do that in bookstores!)
Her quick response was "Well, reading those books is a person's prerogative. With this stuff, it's just in your face, all the time."
What I wanted to say was "Because people in our country read so damned much of that rightwing crap, we see reactions like yours to just about anything sexual." I also could have said, "If you don't like it don't look at it!" or I could have stepped away from my groceries, confronted her and said "Look, you stupid dumbass!" while I went about undoing her and her daughter's "Lord's work"... "We live in a free society, whether you like it or not!" I didn't do or say those things because I engage in the same kind of behavior when I see the wingnut books on display at B & N.
My response was "I assure you I would like to see our country get away from nasty rightwing politics as much as you would like to see higher standards in the kind of magazines people read."
She muttered something under her breath as she followed her daughter, who was busily turning more magazines around a couple of checkout lines ahead.
This reminds me of Lizzy's story about her political encounter with her auto mechanic. Did I do or say the right things here?
11 Comments:
I had to laugh at your story because I can totally picture something like that happening where I live. It reminds me of a story a friend of mine once told me. He and some friends were hanging out at his house listening to music. Apparently it was a little too loud. His neighbor didn't like it. So rather than just call the police or politely ask him to turn it down, his neighbor decided to do something else. He came over to his house, walked inside, and stuck a pitchfork into the stereo. I kid you not!!
By the way, I know what I'll be doing the next time I visit B&N.
You are so going to hell for all eternity! See ya there.
Sounds like you were pretty reasonable.
While I don't condone their magazine turning, I can understand how they feel overwhelmed by all the sex stuff in the media. It gets to me sometimes and I'm an old, lecherous agnostic...
Marquis, that's because you're not a single, hetero, male 20-something. :) If I were Snave, I'd've turned 'em back around. However, if I had a daughter, or any kid for that matter, it would scare the hell outta me.
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And I turn all the magazines with foreign car makers articles backwards.
Now we can solve the whole thing with a big bonfire.
I propose we kindle it with Genesis and all the other creation stories.
Did you do right?
I don't know - I'm the type that would have followed behind her turning them back the other way and when she challenged me, remind her that she didn't own the store and if she ever had her own she could display the magazine any way she pleases in hers.
In fact oddly enough this situation has happened to me, but it was nearly two decades ago.
These monsters reproduce, and when they can't do enough of that they recruit, oh I'm sorry they "witness".
I've got a low threshold for those who seek to practice mind control.
I'd ask her what was shameful about God's creation - right in front of the child that she had seeking out boobie mags.
Not my problem, she asked for it by handing what she found offensive the wrong way - she should have had the courage to speak to management, not deface a display and possibly interfere with an honest employee doing a job for which they are too over worked, and underpaid and uninsured.
Argh!!!
I don't know if there is a right thing to do or say in a momment like that.
I find it odd that she was so quick on her feet to say:
"Well, reading those books is a person's prerogative. With this stuff, it's just in your face, all the time."
That to me sends the signal that she has heard of the people you metioned and perhaps even watches a little of them on the TV or reads their books.
Their books are just as offensive as Cosmo. And have you seen the cover of Ann Coulter's Godless? That's one that really needs to be turned around.
I think when you run into people like that, that are that far gone, there is really nothing you can do or say. They need an intervention and a deprogramming.
Or they can be allowed to live their lives as they see fit.
But there's one caveat: They've got to learn to leave the rest of the fuck alone and stopping trying to legislate their morality on the rest of us.
The far right kooky Christians have the right to be as kooky and end-timerish as they want.
They just need to learn to keep their bullshit out of politics.
Once they start mixing their religion into politics then all bets are off and I consider them legal political targets.
I'm glad you engaged her in conversation. I probably would have just smirked quietly and not said anything. She's entitled to her twisted views; it's just too bad she's been so brainwashed.
Who Hijacked Our Country
I would have told her that I enjoyed looking at cleavage, and that she was violating my Constitutional right to do so, as well as violating the RICO act.....
Well done. Hopefully someone else heard you as well. I think a lot of people follow the wind. If the wind says challenge the nutters, then more people will start challenging them. *Hugs*
In Jesusistan, magazines must not show any flesh. That should only be seen at the whorehouse.
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