Scenes from the East Bay
I passed a guy sitting and reading at a cafe table as I walked down College Ave. in Oakland yesterday, and, as I often do, I snuck a peak over his shoulder to try and make out a title. Atop the left-hand page it said Liberal Fascism. I thought, “wait…, I…, Jonah Goldberg? Here?” But when I turned to look at the person I noticed his slacks seemed oddly dirty, and that was a very soiled nylon duffle bag he had sitting on his table. Also, he was wearing golf shoes, old golf shoes, with the cleats removed, as his walking-around shoes. So, I had to concede that this specter of a guy reading a conservative bestseller in this lefty redoubt was both more explicable and weirder than I had first thought. The guy, seemingly without shame or worry, leafing through Liberal Fascism here on the Oakland-Berkeley border, in public, was in fact homeless. You can’t make that kind of metaphor up.
