Monday Night Football
ESPN’s Monday Night Football at BW’s: these are code words. Monday Night Football, is the NFL game on Monday night. This one was the New York Jets versus the Cleveland Browns (the Browns won 23 to 3.) BW’s is a sports bar, Buffalo Wild Wings. It’s a cold beer, chicken wing place, with tables packed in. It’s set up close, to watch the game, cheer or boo the teams, and end up in conversations with strangers about that “terrible call” or “amazing catch.”
But BW’s was relatively quiet on this Monday night, despite the Browns playing. There were plenty of empty tables. Jenn and I were on the way home from visiting a friend in the hospital; cold beer and wings sounded good. And, after all of my nephew’s hype, I was interested to see the Browns. Hard for a Cincinnati Bengals fan to admit, but he’s right, they’re pretty good.
We sipped our beers, and waited a while for our food. The game came on, and three men met at the table immediately beside us. Of all the open tables in this bar, of all the BW’s in Columbus, these three men decided to meet here, the younger one at the end sitting closer to me than Jenn was across the table.
So Sayeth the One
And then the lesson began.
The older guy started the conversation (I guess at sixty-three now I need to qualify that he was significantly older than his two acolytes, but significantly younger than me.) He started the “Trump Doctrine” litany; all of the Fox News talking points supporting the President.
Now it’s impolite to listen to another table’s conversation, but when the seating is so close it’s difficult to avoid. And when the conversation is held at the “teaching” level, emphasizing points with firmness and authority, it’s difficult not to hear. Jenn and I found it difficult to concentrate on the wings or the game.
With the voice of a priest indoctrinating the Chosen, he talked about Trump’s taxes, how a private businessman shouldn’t have to let the government know what he made. Then it was onto North Korea, how Trump silenced Kim Jung Un, and the strategy was obviously working. It got louder when he intoned on Beto O’Rourke revealing “their real secret plans” with “…Hell yes, we’re going to take your…” but he substituted the word “guns” for Beto’s “AR-15’s and AK’s.”
The two younger men made affirming comments, about how “they” are so wrong about America, and how “we” will show them in the next election. The laughed at a government that would try to save energy by keeping home thermostats at 78, quoting from a local TV ad for home insulation. And they took pride in American “energy independence” with the President releasing oil from the Strategic Reserve to compensate for production lost by Saudi Arabia due to a drone attack.
Free Speech
Listen, I believe in the First Amendment. These guys have the right to think and say whatever they want, and take their “lessons” even in a BW’s during the Browns’ game. I guess my problem is their feeling of entitlement, that it doesn’t matter who sits not just within earshot, but “elbow shot.” Jenn and I didn’t have a choice about hearing the conversation, and didn’t have a voice in the discussion.
It was hard, at first, not to laugh. Then, as the conversation went on, it was harder not to correct. It was time for the check.
We forgot the game, paid the bill, and stepped off the high seats.
Then Jenn turned and said to the Trump adoration meeting: “The world will be a better place when you vote Blue.” They sat silenced, and we headed out of the bar. As left the room we heard, “Build the Wall.”
These days, they probably need to build one down the middle of BW’s.
These people are not your “enemies”. They are your fellow citizens. They ARE entitled to have that conversation, just as you are entitled to have your own conversation right next to them expressing your views of the same issues. Decorum teaches some of us not to have loud conversations about religion or politics in open forums, but others have different sensibilities. You don’t describe them as being drunk, vulgar or abusive. You were forced to overhear a conversation in a bar (a forum where conversations of this sort happen all the time), & you disagreed w the substance of what they had to say. So?
They have the absolute right to have their conversation – as I clearly stated in the essay. My beef – the assumption that those within inches of their conversation agree, or wouldn’t notice. They have the absolute right to be rude and obnoxious – and they were. So there!!
Where’s the beef? You called them “enemies” (I will grant you some degree of artistic license/ hyperbole). You said your problem was with their “entitlement” – but they ARE entitled to state their opinions in a bar. You just didn’t like the content of what they were saying. If they’d had the same conversation, in the same tones, but espoused views with which you agreed, would you have written a post on it?