We've never been to Seattle, but the place sounds like a regular loony bin to judge by an article in Seattle Weekly about the local political culture. Author Matt Rosenberg argues that Republicans may eventually make inroads in the indigo city, but what caught our attention was the anecdotes about political harassment at the hands of the Angry Left:
• Mary Segesta, 40, of Fremont, is a Microsoft program manager who moved here after working for Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems in the San Francisco Bay Area. She had a "W" sticker on her car last fall and was driving to Office Depot in Ballard. "This old beat-up car made a turnaround. The guy followed me toward the store. In the lot he was screaming, 'How does it feel to be a communist?' He pointed to my car and the sticker, said something about Hitler, and then repeated his question." Segesta brushed him off, but says she found the incident both comical and sad.
• Warren Peterson of Pinehurst, in the city's North End, served one term as a Republican state representative from Seattle's 43rd District in the mid-'70s. More recently, the soft-spoken, circumspect Boeing retiree, 65, was the Bush-Cheney campaign chair in the 46th. At a North Seattle sandwich shop, he shares some war stories. Out with several other volunteers waving Bush-Cheney signs at motorists in Ballard last fall, he says one man leaped up through his open sun roof, flipped him off, and yelled, "GUY! YOU FAGGOT REPUBLICAN!" Another driver lunged over his son in the front passenger seat, who looked all of 10, to flip off a Bush supporter.
• Ross Marzolf, 50, lives in the Central District. He's the executive director of the King County Republican Party. Last fall, he says, he was shopping--as some urban Republicans do, actually--at an organic foods store, the Madison Market. "I was standing in line and heard one clerk say to another, 'I just saw my first Bush supporter.' I said, 'I guess I'm No. 2, then.' He looked at me like I was from Mars and, as I was leaving, said something about the president dying and having a good funeral." Disturbed, Marzolf later contacted the management and got an apology, but no longer shops there.
We've gotten our own taste of the Seattle political culture from a reader there who e-mails us almost every day to let us know what he thinks of our column. Here's one recent offering, replying to our item Tuesday on George Voinovich's crying fit (quoting verbatim):
Voinovich does not hew to the Rove line, so he sends lap dogs like you out to assassinate the character of the Senator from Ohio. We have seen this act before James and it is getting real old real fast and real odious. You and Bolton and the Smirking Chimp and Cheney and Delay and the rest of the corrupt crew deserve each other.
But whatever happens Hell Boy, in spite of your weakened mental state and your lock-step response to the RNC memos, I would advise you to watch your Ps & Qs because the Very Reverend Frist, Born Again Delay, the Odious Santorum (whose ratings, like the Fly Boy Chimp are falling as I write) and the rest of the American Taliban are always on the lookout for heretics. And you could very well be next.
You know what I mean: "Back in April 2003, we argued that polygamy would be far worse for society than same-sex marriage"
This is heresy dude. Better watch your back . . .
Maybe it's something in the coffee? |
