So I'm kicking back at home just now, and my girlfriend calls me while on her break at work. She bartends and cocktails at a popular neighborhood bar and grill in north Orange County that has a reputation for attracting a more Republican-leaning crowd (not exclusively so, by any means, but local Repub pols have been known to have events there). She tells me she's shaking because she's just kicked somebody out of her bar for the first time.
Evidently word had gotten 'round to certain of the regulars that my girlfriend was an Obama supporter. So this drunk regular saunters up to her as she is attending to sidework duties, to ask if this was true.
"Not that it matters," she says in an effort to keep political discussions in a bar to a minimum, "but yes, I support Barack Obama."
"Do you know where Obama got all that money to attend Harvard?" the drunk asks.
Her bullshit meter pegging, my girlfriend replies "where?"
"A Muslim," says our drunk friend.
Bless her, my girlfriend calls him on this. "You know, even if that was true, being Muslim doesn't automatically make someone a bad person." And proceeds to tell the guy to cool it with the confrontational political stuff or she would ask him to leave.
Minutes later, said drunk was observed, while staring my girlfriend down with dagger eyes, to remove his wife's scarf and tie it around his head and chin in emulation of a turban.
Long story short, 86 turned out to be drunk guy's lucky number. Out the door he went, his wife apologizing on the way, and a few other regulars rationalizing his crap as he did so. "He's drunk." "He's just that way." "Don't worry about him."
My girlfriend has a number of witnesses ready to attest that she was being singled out and harrassed by this patron specifically on account of her political beliefs, so she's on solid ground. But for those who think that this kind of bigotry and ignorance is confined to the boonies or red-state America, my corner of Southern California has a different story to tell you. If you know which bars to look in.