Hard to say, Russ. Weathered type, could be anywhere from 40 to 55, who knows. I'm really bad at guessing, also.

Curious as to this gentleman's age? Glad to hear your conversation went well! I always have found that we have more in common than we differ on; we just have to be willing to take the time to listen to each other.

-R

I agree with Paula.

Now THAT is brilliant.

First of all, this fellow was not of the Michale ilk, that is, his reasons for supporting Trump weren't just a bunch of recycled stuff from the web or TV. His main concern was that the rural area he lives in has a high unemployment rate, and that over eight years of the Obama administration nobody even asked him what he thought was needed. He was honestly surprised that I was even interested.

But after a while of conversation, we reached an unexpected point of agreement: that it was the media as much as anyone who was to blame for the discontent in the hinterland. But not national media, LOCAL media.

It goes thusly: once upon a time, his little town had a local newspaper and local radio station that provided news, a record of births and deaths, and information related to that area.

Sometime during the seventies the local radio station was bought out, and now has no live disc jockeys at all, much less news, and sometime in the eighties the local newspaper devolved into a shopper's guide. Main street became Wal-Mart, and sometime in the nineties was the first time he heard a local friend refer to the town by the freeway exit number.

Meanwhile, he says, all of the local television stations moved downtown, and as a result, something like 90-95% of the local news became about the city, mostly about black-on-black crime, traffic tie-ups and city council disputes.

That's when he got a satellite dish and started watching FOX news all the time. He likes Huckabee.
Fox also repeats what he already knew: the media doesn't care about your life or your once-proud little town.

So here's the surprising conclusion that we reached: the media could do itself, and democrats, a lot of favors by moving out of the cities and back out to the boondocks. Stop pretending that every downtown event, shooting, and traffic tie-up is a regional problem. The Democrats would do themselves a lot of good by opening a permanent party headquarters on main street that everyone can find, and by starting up a little broadsheet that covers local news.

I walked away from that conversation more cheered than I'd been in a week, even after I realized that we'd spent more time discussing what's wrong with Democrats than what's right about them. But at least we'd found a problem that we could both agree on, and a possible solution for it. That's how politics ought to be discussed all the time.

and had to come back and look at the map again afterwards.

:-)

-CW

Is that anything like Laser Cats (on SNL)?

Heh.

MHorton -

OK, now that was funny!

:-)

"I can has Auztraillera!"

http://icanhas.cheezburger.com/

Heh.

-CW

https://www.explodingkittens.com/