Incivility Abounds

I am now looking for a new barber. The one I have been using gave a decent haircut, nothing special, but I only get haircuts to keep my wife from nagging me so I’m not all that fussy. He just raised his price from $12 to $16, but that’s fine. The increase is a little steep, but even at the new price that’s a reasonable rate for a haircut, and I don’t mind paying it.

My problem with him started when, as he began cutting my hair, he launched into a discussion of how Obama is a socialist and Obamacare is “the biggest tax increase in history.” People who read me regularly know that I am by no means an Obamabot and am certainly no fan of “health care reform,” but his claim about the “biggest tax increase in history” is a profoundly ignorant and inaccurate claim, and is made only by partisan political hacks. It is just plain stupid to be engaging in that kind of discussion in a retail marketing setting.

The final straw was when another customer sat down in the next chair and announced that he was lucky because he had enrolled in a yoga class where the rest of the class was all women and “they are all hookers.” A boisterous and crude discussion ensued, including the guy cutting my hair, on how to “get” and treat women that might have been worthy of 14-year-olds, but only if they were high school dropouts and stoned on drugs.

What’s frightening is, these guys vote in national elections.