Cal, Mac, and the Jukebox:

They are spouting red-neck, cottongin-town, church of smallness, narrow-minded, everyone-must-be-like-me bullshit over longneck beers with something straight from Nashville on the jukebox.

Cal pushes his filthy seed-company cap back on his head, exposing his white forehead, and spouts off something about the ills of this country, and I hear the word “liberals,” mixed in with racial and sexual slurs.

Mac uses a thick, horny, working-man’s hand to peel the label off of his Coors… no light beer for him, thank you… and echoes something from the Limbaugh-Fox-falling-off-the-right-hand-side-into-oblivion-show, using bigger words than he actually owns.

As I slide their next two beers across the bar, I comment that this country was founded on freedom… not just freedom OF but freedom FROM… and somewhere in there I use words like choice, repression, and populous (as in uneducated and uninformed).

Blank looks follow me as I walk away to make a note for the jukebox guy to take that song off the menu before I bang my head on the wall until it bleeds.

Cal turns to Mac and shrugs, “She reads a lot.”