Saturday, June 20, 2009

No Red Friends or Blue Friends

As I mentioned before, my friends Faith and Ryan are in town visiting. Even though Faith was the President of the Bruin Republicans, a lightening rod position at the liberal bastion of UCLA, she was a uniter and not a divider. That was evidenced by the eclectic group of people who came out to dinner last night to see F&R. In Faith's own words . . .
"we met our group of over achieving student government politicos from out west at cafe asia. where they really do serve food from all over asia. mowgli had his native indonesian and i had japanese. lauren had thai and doan had something from singapore. everyone gave it two thumbs up. it was nice to see the people i adored and hear what they are up to these days. the lefties out numbered the right wingers. a famous blogette, the unions, some law school nerds, lawyers, and the unemployed. represent."
We were also supposed to have a street matador/model/soap opera star that Ryan knows at dinner, but alas he did not show up. Much sadness.

Some people might think the political demographic of this table would lead to huge political arguments. (final count, 7 liberals v. 6 conservatives/ libertarians. We were all in Bruin Dems or Bruin Republicans. And the current jobs range from AFL-CIO activists to Ashcroft's personal assistant.)

Some others might even wonder how we are all friends at all. Cliche, but true answer: we are more alike than we are different.

Sure, we share a love of politics, which led most of us to be involved in student government politics and life in DC. And yes, most of us will be lawyers (final count: 2 incoming law students, 3 current, 1 grad, and 1 practicing attorney at the dinner). But even beyond that, we have "normal people" things in common. Whether it be love of Bravo-reality tv, world travel, or all things UCLA. We can talk about politics civilly (at least most of the time), but we can talk about other things too.

I am always sad when I see people automatically separate themselves from people of different political ideologies, because they are losing out on what could be some great friendships.

1 comment:

faithsalutes said...

Chairwomyn to you Doan. HA. Thank you for your kind words...I rather win people over, especially YOU. xoxo