No, italics is good. It beats boring.

This was cool because I rarely get to hear what the people I know through OS sound like. I've spoken to two on the phone and met a third and that's it. (Aside from my niece, but she hardly ever posts.)

This also answered another question: a lot of names on here are pseudonyms and I wasn't sure about yours. (Mine of course isn't; I was named Koshersalaami at birth.) I theorized that if yours were a pseudonym, it would be designed to throw us off track just enough, so that your real name might be Kim McCarron (like the Las Vegas airport). Now I know.

Speaking of which, there is a pretty good PSA put together by Kid Rock and Sean Penn about reaching across partisan divides. I found it pretty engaging and I'm writing something inspired by it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQJ2ULuhb8

Well, Kosh, I demand to see your birth certificate!

I actually did meet a Kim McCarron once; it was a little weird. I don't think either of us had realized, before we met, that our names were reversible like that. Both of us are all the time called by the wrong first name. Often, I genuinely don't even notice when people call me "Kim," in probably the same way that my male relatives have learned to answer readily to "Mac."

Cranky, THANKS for that link!!! The first minute or so was hard to watch, but I love the spirit of the rest of it. My grin hasn't yet faded. It just drives me crazy to hear people complaining about polarization, when there is so much that each of us can do to overcome it, at no cost or risk. Kudos to Kid Rock and Sean Penn.

Good for you, Karen, for promoting this kind of dialogue. It's needed now more than ever.

When I read the NPR summary, it struck me very forcefully that the two speakers could not agree on whether to label the immigrant workers "illegals" or "undocumented." As always, the differences in labeling reflect, and promote, different attitudes.

In that regard, I notice that while you describe yourself in your OS Bio as having "conservative political values," the NPR article described you as a "self-professed progressive." Did that ever come up in the discussions? It strikes me that it would really cut to the heart of the matter and perhaps even stimulate some re-thinking of people's political assumptions and analyses.

David, I was kind of frustrated with the exchange about 'undocumented' versus 'illegal.' Actually, the two Guatemalan immigrants didn't make a fuss about it themselves; it came up in questioning. The fun part of it, though, was that the questioner started his 'question' with a statement that 'illegal immigrant' is the correct term, because that's what the Constitution calls them. In a group of about 30 people, four of us (including me) whipped out copies of the Constitution that we carry with us. Not a typical bunch, I suspect.

* * *

You've caught, I'm sure, that in my bio I'm playing with the word 'conservative.' I've never done that in conversation at Reach Out Wisconsin. But the fact that you cannot get through the evening without labeling yourself as on one of two 'sides' is the thing that bothers me most about the group. If we must sort ourselves into teams, I prefer quadrants to a single left-to-right continum. On the political compass, I scored in the middle of the lower left green quadrant--with Mahatma Gandhi, a communitarian libertarian. (Those folks use the term 'libertarian' in its British meaning.) Take that test yourself; it's fun.)

Just like in real life, framing the conversation as one with two sides does real damage to the chances of creative, problem-solving dialogue.

Example: Both presenters were asked whether they thought that increasing the number of visas would help the US's undocumented/illegal immigration problem. The right-wing presenter immediately said yes, but only for people like her sister who had immediate family of citizens here to support them. The liberal presenter surprised everyone by saying that his preferred solution did not involve increasing legal immigration. He said that instead of looking at immigration policy, we should look at US agricultural policies and international banking policies that make it hard for Guatemalans to live in Guatemala.

With that, he stepped out of the script that would have him simply taking opposite positions to the conservative. You could almost feel most people in the room thinking, "Well, I don't know what to do with that. Let's ask a question that makes their differences more apparent." A more productive, constructive, creative dialogue would have taken off down the path he opened. Doesn't everyone agree that it would be best if people all over the world could bloom where they are planted? Why can't they? etc.