{"id":33326,"date":"2015-10-25T02:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33326"},"modified":"2015-10-22T11:43:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T15:43:41","slug":"small-talk-in-pubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/25\/small-talk-in-pubs\/","title":{"rendered":"Small talk in pubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Warren<\/a> admits he’s not welcome at a few local drinking establishments nowadays:<\/p>\n

There are at least two tables, within pubs in the Greater Parkdale Area, where, notwithstanding I was once quite welcome, I am not today. Some think this is because of my opinions, which are those of a rightwing fanatic and religious nutjob. But no: it is because I am willing to express them. This is a form of incontinence, one might argue; and like other forms, it may accord with increasing age. Yet I do not think that silence is invariably golden.<\/p>\n

To hear me tell it \u2014 and whom else were you expecting, gentle reader? \u2014 it goes like this. In years past, I would sit quietly and ignore nonsense, especially political nonsense, spoken by my fellow imbibers. I can still do this. Many of the most ludicrous remarks, on any passing issue, are not actually opinions of the speaker. He simply echoes or parrots the views of the media and his own social class. I\u2019ve been absorbing this \u201cbackground music\u201d for years; why revolt now? The noise is anyway not arguments but gestures.<\/p>\n

Say, \u201cStephen Harper,\u201d and watch the eyeballs roll. Say, \u201cGeorge Bush,\u201d and still, ditto. Say \u201cRichard Nixon,\u201d however, and you don\u2019t get much of a rise any more, for memories out there are short, very short.<\/p>\n

(A Czech buddy, in the olden days, once performed this experiment in a pub. \u201cI just love<\/em> that Richard Nixon!\u201d he declared, in his thick, Slavic accent, loud enough to afflict the Yankee draft-dodgers at the next table, who\u2019d been prattling about Watergate too long. \u201cGives those liberals heart attacks,\u201d he added. \u2026 Some bottle-tossing followed from that, and we were all banned together, so ended up as friends.)<\/p>\n

On the other hand say, \u201cBarack Obama,\u201d and they will focus like attentive puppies. Or, \u201cJustin Trudeau\u201d to the ladies, to make them coo.<\/p>\n

It is a simple Pavlovian trick, and might be done in reverse in a rightwing bar, except, there are no rightwing bars in big cities.<\/p>\n

Yet everyone knows there are rightwing people, even in Greater Parkdale. And they are welcome anywhere they want to buy a pint, the more if they\u2019re buying for the whole table. The one condition is that they must keep their \u201cdivisive\u201d opinions to themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Warren admits he’s not welcome at a few local drinking establishments nowadays: There are at least two tables, within pubs in the Greater Parkdale Area, where, notwithstanding I was once quite welcome, I am not today. Some think this is because of my opinions, which are those of a rightwing fanatic and religious nutjob. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[104,351,515,207],"class_list":["post-33326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-politics","tag-booze","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-richardnixon","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Fw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33327,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33326\/revisions\/33327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}