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• Sunday, December 25, 2005 04:42 PM

  Is it California and Los Angeles?

  I was fortunate that my father stayed an unrepentent liberal to his dying day (age 85) and my mom has never had any deep-seated political interests. My mom, however, has many, many extreme rightwing friends (from her condo association, old college connections, etc.) and I share your amazement at how rightwing talk radio has cranked these folks up until every topic turns into a political one and they miss no opportunity to launch into rants complete with bulging eyeballs, red faces, curled lips, and even spittle.

  From her working class friends, I sort of expect this. But I was shocked when we recently visited an extremely wealthy college educated couple -- gourmets, art collectors -- and at least once an hour they worked themselves into near-hysteria on the topic of race, crime, abortion, homosexuality, AIDS, or teen sex. You would think that their Los Angeles hilltop mansion were in a war zone -- and apparently they think it is, with more gates, alarms and security paraphernalia that you'd see in a high-tech computer company. They're retired, don't seem to have many friends, so a lot of their time is spent watching TV and listening to talk radio.

  I won't go into any details, because you've described it well enough, but it did occur to me that I'd never heard anything close to what I heard in Los Angeles in Boston, New York or Miami. Could this be something about L.A.?

  —Betaille Read Betaille's other letters
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