I was in a strange town, Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was staying at a hotel - not one of the four star kind but one of those weekly kind that displaced persons frequent. I had an interview for a job that day and needed a fresh haircut. I stepped in to the nearest barbershop knowing nothing about it. I felt lucky that there was a barbershop near and that there was an open chair. I nodded at the man next to the chair with the scissors in his hand in the kind of body language that is a universal request for permission. The man was wearing a very big smile. The man with the scissors in his hand with the very big smile waived the scissors to the chair in a 'yes' reply and I sat. When I looked up I immediately noticed that I had just been offered the only open chair in a really crowded room. I had the sudden and distinct feeling that mine was quite possibly the only white face that had ever occupied a chair in that particular room.

Once I got over the initial shock I realized that the goings on really weren't that much different than those in the back room of the Dairy Queen in the town where I grew up. The banter was just as child-like. Not a too small amount of it was at my expense but that was to be expected. After all, how else are they to know if this idiot who just fell into their little piece of the world isn't some joker just playing out some sort of a dare?

My foray took place during the time of real segregation and real conversations about Dr. Martin Luther King. Yes, way back then, he did have his detractors even among black people - the same way Kennedy had his among whites. Some of it was just contrariness. Every hang out has its contraries just as every one who has ever hung out has at one time or another been a contrary - else there wouldn't be any conversation and we'd all live in a permanent twenty minute party quiet zone.

You didn't have to be on the debate team to know that sometimes a person gets tagged, like it or not, to be the one who has to take the unpopular side of a topic just to get a conversation going among friends.

The fact that the writers and the producers and the directors and the editors and the camera persons and the actors and the grips responsible for the movie, one and all, allowed the inclusion of a little negative banter about some arguably great people doesn't mean that anyone is genuinely disparaging anyone else. It has to be all in fun because no one is shooting anyone or burning anything. I find it a pleasant story within a story example of America as the land of free speech.

And, no one should be genuinely surprised that some present day big names are continuing the free speech theme by griping about the content of Barbershop. It's what they are paid to do. If it weren't for free speech the people on both sides of this equation would be jobless. And, Hollywood folks know that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That makes all this brouhaha a win-win situation that provides everybody a little bit better paycheck for their efforts.

If they do cut part of the movie it won't be because some blowhards are in a snit. The distributors will only make an effort on a re-release because that would mean the purists would be left to buy another, uncut version to make a complete library. Ye$ it would. Right now they're just testing the waters to see if they can make an extra buck or two that way.

By the way, I came out of the barbershop with really short hair, but I got the job.

Then again, maybe . . .

patrig