In the fall of 2012, an older white man in a pick-up truck pulled into the parking lot of the post office in the Austin, Texas-area middle-class neighborhood where my wife Tracie and I used to live with our two young daughters.

In the back window of his cab, he had fastened a bumper sticker that read: “I’ll take the Mormon over the moron.” Taking advantage of his all-American liberty of expression, he was sharing his desire that Mitt Romney win the 2012 presidential election.

Yesterday, I read a Houston Chronicle (the city’s paper of record) account of a Houston-area sheriff who pulled over a Houston-area resident because she had a “Fuck Trump and fuck you for voting for him” bumper sticker affixed to the window of her truck’s cab. He ended up arresting her on an unrelated charge. But, according to the Chronicle report, the woman and her husband — who live not far from where Tracie and I now live in southwest Houston with our children — had already been pulled over more than once by law officers, who were unable to concoct sufficient grounds for arrest.

These parallel though incongruous episodes were on my mind when I woke up this morning to find hate email in my inbox from a Houston Press reader.

In reference to Thanksgiving wine recommendations I published one year ago today on the Houston Press website, Teddy S. wrote me to keep my politics to myself.

It was remarkable to re-read the piece this morning.

If I only knew then what I know now! But that was before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville this year, where Trump supporters gathered to chant “Jews will not replace us” and the president responded by noting that there were “some very fine people” among them.

I stand by my wine recommendations and my politics from November 17, 2016 — as I did then, as I do now.

I’d only like to add that (cru) Beaujolais Morgon is a wonderful wine to serve for the holiday as well: I’ll take the Morgon over the moron (available at the Houston Wine Merchant). I’m having the bumper stickers printed as I write this and I should have them in time for the holiday. I just hope my wife, daughters, and I don’t get pulled over by my local sheriff on the way to our family gathering.

“We are witnessing what happens when right-wing politics becomes untethered from morality and religion,” wrote Republican and Christian conservative Michael Gerson, one of President George W. Bush’s former chief speechwriters, in an op-ed yesterday.

A Thanksgiving pairing of morality, religion, and right-wing politics. Now wouldn’t that be something? It would be something else…

Happy holiday, everyone. Politics aside, please drink Sonoma and Napa wines this Thanksgiving to help in wine country’s recovery from the devastating October wildfires.