I think it only fair that bloggers read other blogger’s blogs, and I’m nothing if not fair. Too fair, because sometimes I read things I’d rather not have read. Like this, from a blog called The View Through the Windshield, written by a charming fellow named Joe Sherlock:
While I have problems with Romney’s positions on issues and his apparent flip-flopping, I am sick and tired of people bashing him because of his religion. Mormons make pretty good neighbors – they keep up their homes, don’t throw loud parties, never blanket the air with disgusting ethnic cooking odors, don’t scream at their kids through open doorways in an incomprehensible language and have no wacko friends who show up drunk at 3:00 am, blowing their car horns until someone acknowledges their presence. And then throw up on your sidewalk.
Except for the bit about disgusting ethnic cooking odors, Joe could be talking about poor white folks anywhere . . . my neighbors, or yours. But he said ethnic, so it’s clear he’s disgusted with some particular group: Jews, Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, maybe the whole lot.
Disgusting ethnic cooking odors? Clearly, what we have here is a good white Christian Republican, and all I have to say is I’m glad I’m not having dinner at his house. Joe’s probably tucking into some Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks right about now, or maybe meatloaf (without ketchup, the way Jesus would eat it).
I grew up in a Midwestern white-bread Southern Baptist family. I remember when pizza came to this country in the 1950s. I ate my first slice (pepperoni, mushroom, anchovy) shortly after reading On the Road, thereby becoming, in my mind at least, an authentic beatnik. In civics class I watched a short titled “Mexico: Our Amigos to the South” and dreamed of eating a taco some day. Eventually I married an Italian-American girl, joined the Air Force, and began traveling around the world . . . there’s nothing disgusting about ethnic cooking odors to me. It means there’s something good for dinner!