[Overpaid Slacker]

I think most folks still get along pretty well here; then again, I was raised in a quaintly combative Irish household so I've got a pretty thick skin. As a reasonably vocal, reasonably conservative Pelican, there are only a couple of the Lefties here who make me cringe -- and it's not nec. their opinions, it's their delivery. If I don't feel like a fight, I don't click on the thread. No big deal.

On the "commie pig" front, I've got an apropos anecdote. My final semester of law school, I'm taking a bankruptcy class with J.J. White (the undisputed heavyweight God of commercial transactions law, who wrote a good part of the Uniform Commercial Code, including the bankruptcy sections). J.J. is a tough guy and a very demanding professor. I hadn't taken the prerequisite Commercial Transactions class (which curricular omission he pointed out to me on several occasions had theretofore uniformly resulted in failure by previous students). So he knew exactly who I was but had never had me in class before. I was squarely on his radar screen as a big, fat, probably-gonna-fail-anyway blip.

Anyhoo, one day we're going over creditors' committees and representations thereon by parties owed money. It turns out that usually the more established creditors (banks, insurance companies, etc.) get much more "say" in the process than the mom 'n' pop type creditors. I mentioned that it seems inequitable for the big, deep-pocket creditors to have almost unfettered discretion over the committee when a loss to them would be less than a rounding error in their financials, whereas a mom 'n' pop creditor could be crushed by an unfavorable bankruptcy payout structure.

J.J. looks up in disgust and erupts with "You know, I've got to hear this all the time from goddamn bleeding heart liberals like you!" and goes on for a minute about how we liberals are all kinds of clueless.

Given my vocal participation in other classes throughout my career and the opinions I'd voiced, I was not the only shocked party in the room... Many other students turned, staring in disbelief. I stood up, banged on the desk and said "Dammit, White! I've been called a lot of things in my life, but never Liberal!"

The next day I wore my G.O.P. hat to class. White and I got on fine, and I passed comfortably.

JP