True stories that read like Onion articles--Cafe serves up coffee with conservative flavor.
From the moment customers enter the front door, the Conservative Cafe is serving up caffeinated doctrine.Ann Coulter books sit stacked by the fireplace, and a picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall. Fox News plays on all the televisions, and stock market quotes scroll along an electronic ticker above the cash register.Behind the counter, owner Dave Beckham smiles proudly in a khaki T-shirt that reads "Zip It, Hippie." The shirt is for sale at the Crown Point, Ind., cafe, along with ones that say "Peace through Superior Firepower.""It's a change from the traditional liberal bastion coffeehouses," Beckham says. "No one is going to bad-mouth America in here."
Because nothing is more American than expresso. Stuff that in your cup with a half-naked mermaid on it and drink it, liberals!
He didn't like piped-in folk music, specialty drinks with faux-Italian names or patrons who frittered the hours away on laptops or listening to iPods. The atmosphere, he said, seemed an affront to Midwestern values he learned growing up in northwest Indiana.
Who wants customers actually hanging around your establishment? Customers are for left-leaning, pinko coffee houses.
"Coffee shouldn't be about sitting in a cafe for 12 hours," Beckham says. "Coffee gets us through our workday. It's what we drink before we make steel for the rest of the country or head out into the fields."
To be fair we buy the steel from other countries but we get the point.
"We're trying to push back against the media and those in Europe who are anti-America," he said. "And it feels good to do it."The Italians are our enemies.
Crown Point resident Matthew McPhee is one of them. He doesn't feel comfortable in trendier coffeehouses, where he sometimes doesn't recognize the music and often doesn't agree with the political conversations. He prefers the Conservative Cafe, where red-white-and-blue bunting hangs outside the brick building and patrons can buy T-shirts that read, "Silly liberal. . . . Paychecks are for Workers."
Exactly. You go into a Starbucks these days and you hear wacky new music from bands like the Rolling Stones or James Brown. Stuff that only the kids are listening to.
The decor may poke fun at liberals, but Beckham says they're welcome in his establishment. In the first few weeks after opening, for example, he extended his operating hours to accommodate an ideologically mixed group of "Hannity & Colmes" fans, who wanted to watch the show and debate the topics.
So much wrong with his assumptions here. He assumes "Hannity & Colmes" has fans. He also assumes said fans actually "debate" the issues discussed rather than blankly stare at the screen as drool slowly makes it's way down their chins.
"Conservative doesn't mean you belong to a certain political party," McCall says. "It's a way of thinking. It goes beyond politics."
"Thinking" is a generous term to use with regard to conservatives.
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