I like to make fun of yuppies, but occasionally I have to admit to a great big closet yuppie chattering (loudly, on the iphone) inside me. Sometimes this happens when republicans are making fun of liberals and I think, what’s wrong with lattes? Mostly it happens when I’m grocery shopping.

I remember a few years ago waiting in the check-out line behind a woman a few years older than me. Her toddler, no older than two, was reaching for one of the impulse items. Quite seriously the woman said, “That’s biscotti. BIS-COTT-EY. Can you say biscotti?” It made me giggle at the time, but I guess I can’t make too much fun when I’m the one choosing to shop at a store where there’s biscotti up front instead of Butterfingers.

Today I had another reminder when we stopped to look at a plastic wrapped package of veal brains. You know your grocery store is catering to yuppies when they sell veal brains.

Matt and I made fun of Heinens for a while until we got to the check-out line. Then we got into a discussion with the woman working the register about the benefits of bison meat versus ostrich meat.

I looked at the items in our cart. Organic broccoli, organic garlic, organic eggs, organic milk, organic whole wheat pasta. Ostrich fillets and pesto turkey sausage. I realized, we belong here. Like it or not, we really are yuppies.

I shouldn’t be ashamed of trying to eat healthy, of trying to keep chemicals out of my body. I’m not really. I am occasionally embarrassed though. And why?

I know that Obama’s presidency is supposed to shoo in a new era of cooperation and forgiveness, but every so often I find myself overcome with a wave of anger at the right wing media machine.

I know republicans claim that there’s a massive liberal media conspiracy. As an openly leftist liberal myself, I can’t claim objectivity, so even though I think it’s absurd to call the reporters on NPR biased, I’ll admit there might be some liberal bias in some media channels, so long as conservatives will admit the same on their side. And to me there is a huge difference between the supposed liberal bias and the blatent, Fox News b.s.

The “liberal meda” might have spent the last eight years attacking the bush administration (and no, obviously that was a bias and not the result of, I dunno, incompetence) but Fox News has spent the last eight years attacking ME.

How the HELL did they manage to turn energry conservation into something bad, into a sign of elitism? Since when is buying organic a bad thing? How dare they imply that anyone who is health conscious, or environmentally conscious, or socially conscious is a flighty, empty headed LIBERAL, with liberal suddenly carrying approximately all the positive qualities of a pinko-commie-Marxist in the 50s?

It’s not only that, not only the anti-liberal message we’ve been force fed for years. I am furious every time I think of Sarah Palin talking about how the “real America” is in small towns. The clear implication is that if you aren’t a Palin “type,” not a corn farmer, or a fake plummer or a… whatever else it is they do in small towns, you’re not a real American.

So fine. I like fruufy coffee drinks and I buy organic. I threatened to move to Canada when Bush got re-elected. I threatened again if Obama didn’t win, and I kind of meant it. I am a liberal and I can’t stand Sarah Palin. I may well be a yuppie. In spite of all that, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear.

I do not eat veal brains.

*Photos from Flickr users Jhritz and Kerryank. And me.