60 Minutes II

Warm Greeting To Cold Shoulder

By Michael Wuebben

November 21, 2000 / 3:13 PM EST / CBS

There's a restaurant in my area that I've been going to for years where the food is great and everyone is greeted warmly by the manager. Because I'm on television, I think I'm greeted more warmly than the normally unusually warm greeting others get.

That all changed on Friday night. Oh, the greeting was still there, but when you set the warmth bar so high, you really notice if it's slipped a little.

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Why? The election. This fellow who runs the place is a Bush backer, and he feels all of us in the media are Gore backers. He felt the early Florida call for Gore on TV that had some Bush backers turn their cars around and go home was a liberal plot. When I pointed out that a few hours later that all the networks called it for Bush, he ignored me, as he ignored everything I said. The warmth I've seen for years was nowhere to be found, replaced by a look I'd rather not remember. When he said it was the media that invented the Electoral College, I figured it was time to get started on my soup.

I can see the tension over the 2000 election go on for a very long time. I know this. In the foreseeable future when I'm in any social situation where the talk turns to politics, I'm just going to quietly slip out a back door, something up until now I've only done when they're about to start a game of charades.