Now Rush Limbaugh is at it. "We also have a polarization in this country of elites versus average people," Limbaugh said recently on Fox News. "The elites think they're the smart people and they think Sarah Palin's a hayseed hick. She may as well be on the NASCAR circuit."

NASCAR is a sport.

But unlike all the other sports - yes, even hockey and soccer for the respective Mom-types out there - it actually transcends sports and wanders towards culture.

Yes, NASCAR is culture. And this is exactly where it gets weird for me.

I love NASCAR and red meat and I live in a small town. What does that have to do with politics?

I am a liberal. I believe that George McGovern could have been a great president. Why should that affect my opinion of NASCAR?

I am not very smart but I try to be open-minded.

I am a liberal that listens to Rush Limbaugh. I think Fox News is tremendously entertaining and I watch often – and am often surprised, sometimes even in a good way.

I think it is much more interesting to listen to someone I disagree with than to listen to someone who holds my opinions - which I can usually explain to myself better than a talking head on TV.

I can never imagine why someone would disagree with me, but I am interested to know and so I listen to Limbaugh and watch Fox.

I thought open-minded was good. But that's where it really gets weird.

NASCAR taught this liberal from Massachusetts that true tolerance and actual intellectual curiosity in America are rare. That's right, I'm talking as a liberal intellectually about NASCAR.

What do you think I am, a complete idiot?

In fact, I am the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To NASCAR which I like to say ironically is the greatest book title ever. As an actual Complete Idiot I feel it is within my right to claim membership in the ethnic group, Idiot-American.

I am not only the author of the book, I am also the audience so therefore I truly am a complete idiot but I did not know how stupid until I tried to tell of my interest in NASCAR to those who are not interested.

I noticed in many who claim to be open-minded a trait that many Americans seem to share - the disdain for a subject that they know virtually nothing about.

I suppose I am the same way.

But often a disinterest in NASCAR is expressed is nastier terms than a disinterest in other sports.

And that's what NASCAR taught me, a liberal from Massachusetts who grew up near Cleveland, Ohio when Dennis Kucinch was mayor.

I am fairly new to the sport. I did not know I love NASCAR until I fell in love with NASCAR. And that's when I learned the divisive nature of the word.

It is horribly disappointing to find proven how close-minded so many in this country have become - about almost everything.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a sport really is just a sport.

Yet NASCAR is portrayed as more political than anything except for real political issues. Why?

I don't know. I am a complete idiot.

I learned that people who consider themselves highly educated often downgrade things they are unfamiliar with – just the same as those who are not as highly educated also put down things for which they are not all that acquainted.

I learned to love NASCAR when I wrote my book. But unlike fans of baseball or Dancing With The Stars or even fans of a politically active rock star - somehow watching a NASCAR race has become interpreted as a political statement.

This is idiotic.

NASCAR is an intellectually and physically challenging endeavor for those involved and it is emotionally exciting for the fans. Just like any other sport. That's it.

Most embarrassing to me, as a meat-eating liberal and a NASCAR fan, is the unmistakable prejudice that some who call themselves liberal feel against a sport.

In fact, it's almost as embarrassing as the unmistakable prejudice that many who call themselves conservative have against an elite education.

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