Dear Prudence? Dear God!

This has got to be among the most asinine questions I've heard in ages.

Dear Prudie,

My partner and I are having our condominium remodeled. We have worked well with one company and asked them to bid a second phase of the job. The person who showed up to bid the job wore a cap with an angry bald eagle on the front with multiple American flags sewn onto the rest of the cap. When I was obviously startled at the hat, he acknowledged, "Guess I should have worn my company hat." I replied, "I would be more comfortable if you had because I can't support much of what the country is doing right now." This led to his reply, "Just so we all support America." My partner and I are gay and feel assaulted by the right wing. We are also horrified by the war in Iraq and so many other issues that our patriotism is very low. That hat was a sickening reminder of my childhood in rural America. I feel that perhaps my money should be spent in a more socially conscious fashion, but I don't relish starting my own campaign of reverse discrimination. Am I making too much of this incident? The company has done a good job for us so far.

-- Uneasy Remodeler [bold added]

Prudence did okay, showing as she did how this idiot's premise would result in all sorts of uncalled-for rudeness. Judith Martin would have been far better, earning bonus points for flaying this presumptuous twit for daring to even try to get her to bless off this display of nosiness and bigotry as even remotely polite.

The more abrupt -- and hence more appropriate -- reply would be something like this: "If you don't like his hat, kick him out of your house, assclown. You can do that, you know: It is, America, after all!"

Just gettin' one off my chest here.

Oh yeah. There is one more thing. Does this insistence on the "right" politics, as it were -- even when politics has nothing to do with the matter at hand -- not resemble the attitude of America's Islamofascist enemies, who feel that no aspect of our lives, however trivial, is outside the sphere of Islam?

Same attitude, different religion excuse.

-- CAV