Red or Blue, which are you? .... Quiz!

You're tippin' yer hand here, Habibi . . . in this and other threads . . . you spendin' yer day at Slate?

I've abandoned the old nonconfrontational approach and started cutting my debating teeth on "real" New Yorkers, who still outnumber the likes of me 5 to 1. I've also been exchanging war stories with other members of this sapphire city's silent minority.

My favorite belongs to 26-year-old John Fitzgerald, who as a college senior in 2000 went to cast his presidential primary vote on the Upper West Side. The other night at a local bar, he told me his tale of travail. He tried to pull the knob for his preferred candidate, he said, but it wouldn't budge. After several unsuccessful attempts, he exited the booth to report that the machine wasn't working. This apparently confounded everyone, since no one had complained about the machine all day. The poll workers conferred, until finally a light bulb went off. "Are you a Republican?" someone asked.

The room fell silent. All eyes turned toward the extraterrestrial in their midst. Fitzgerald fessed up. Yes, he was trying to cast his ballot for a GOP candidate. And therein lay the malfunction: After checking voters' affiliations all day, the poll workers had found the task superfluous and had overlooked Fitzgerald's party. The machine, like all the others in the polling place, was set for the Democratic primary and had to be reset before he could vote. "I've heard about the Democratic machine in New York," Fitzgerald chuckled, "but I didn't know it was an actual one."

Slinking away, I stroll down Irony Row; a two-block stretch of Sunset Blvd. filled with boutiques peddling vintage 1970s lunch boxes, summer-camp T-shirts, and baby-doll dresses for grown women. So steeped are its denizens in the culture of irony that almost everyone thinks my shirt is a hilarious joke. As I browse through the Vice magazine store, a pair of girls giggles at me. One of them comments, "I've never seen that one before." A 40ish man dressed in cargo shorts, flamboyant sunglasses, and a Lance Armstrong bracelet sees my shirt and bursts out laughing. "Way to go, man!" he says, giving me a thumbs up. Then, as I walk into a wacky gift shop, I hear a shriek. The woman behind the counter throws up her hands in mock horror, "Oh no! Bush-Cheney! In Silverlake!" she cackles, feigning horror at my hilarious costume, as if humoring a child on Halloween. [..]

The next day, I head to Brentwood [..] I sit down to eat. Dining nearby is a young girl who looks to be about 6-years-old; she gazes at my shirt with a look so forlorn, I expect to learn that Dick Cheney just stole her crayons. Her mother arrives and gives her a hug of consolation. The girl starts to talk, but I can only make out "Bush shirt," which she says to her mother as she points my way. The mother turns and glares, shaking her head at me. I start to wonder what sort of person I am to inflict this on a poor child.

Up in the San Vicente shopping area, things go even less smoothly. At the first intersection, an older man in the weekend wear of the very prosperous passes me and yells, "Bush-Cheney?!?" as though demanding an explanation. At the Coral Tree Organic Café, a willowy, bookish woman seated alone glares at me from across the room. When I smile and wave to her, she puts on her sunglasses.