The Shortest Protest in the World
I was quite surprised that at least two different protesters managed to get into Madison Square Garden for Bush's speech tonight. I'm even more surprised the networks showed the people being rushed out of the arena; I figured the GOP would have a tighter system set up than that. Even baseball manages to whitewash the rowdies off the TV broadcast.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to hear what either of the people managed to shout out that revealed them to be the filthy GOP-hating infiltrators they were. Didn't they sign the oath?
After seeing them hustled out, it got me to thinking: Those must have been some of the shortest protests in the world. No march down the mall for those folks, no getting hoarse with their battle crys of "Hell no, we won't do some thing that you want us to do!" Basically, these people got one shout, and that was going to be that.
One shout? That's an awful lot of pressure. If I had gone to all the trouble to infiltrate Madison Square Garden for Bush's acceptance speech, and I only had the chance to make one protest shout before being hustled out, I would damn well want to be sure I made that shout as power-packed as possible.
But what to shout? What short burst of words could I belt out that best captured my feelings about what was going on? Would I even want to capture my feelings? Maybe I should instead go the truth route, shout out the one most true problem with this administration.
"No blood for oil!" Well, maybe. But I'm not sure Iraq was about oil so much. Plus, it's so hackneyed. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through to yell the same thing 6,000 people who need a shower are yelling outside at the same time.
"Bush lied, people died!" Good choice there. I'd consider it, and of course the rhyme is always catchy. But it also suffers from the overuse problem, and besides, I think most people probably understand now that Bush lied, and have either moved past it or decided to vote for him anyway.
But then I thought, hey, this election is about a total lack of domestic policy being poo-poohed in favor of convincing people that we will all die if Bush isn't President. Why not just yell out, "Bush is making the world hate us and creating more terrorists!" But geez, that's a mouthful. Try yelling that out loud real fast. It's hard not to garble it, and you know you'd be nervous, what with knowing you only got one shot, and that as soon as you yelled it a bunch of delegates dressed in those red, white and blue oxford shirts that made them look like rodeo clowns would tackle you and heel-kick you with their boots.
Christ. Picking a slogan is hard. I imagined that if I was in that position, I'd have probably had a chance to coordinate and plan my protest shout in advance, working with several different liberal protest groups. At first, I figured that would help me arrive at a consensus, but then I realized that everybody's pet agenda would compete at that point, and nobody has pet agendas like liberals.
One group would want me to talk about Bush's assault on gay rights. "Bush discriminates to appease relgious fanatics!" Then the enviornment lobby would weigh in. "No, don't say that, even though it's true and we feel your pain, my gay and trans-gendered brothers and sisters. You need to say 'Bush dooms kids living next to power plants to die of mercury poisoning!'. But then a bunch of angry IT workers might join the fray and so, "No! Just say, 'No exporting jobs offshore!'"
After about 20 seconds of this short imagination exercise, I became overwhelmed with the possibilities and pressures surrounding what I was supposed to shout. Maybe there were 20 other infiltrators going in, but only two of us made it through the gauntlet of goons and big hair and token minorities, all of which focused even more pressure on me. There I was, ready to become one of the most famous political protesters of the modern age, ready to carry forth the pride and frustration of so many of the people who have been let down and pissed off by this fraudulent group of power brokers.
This was it! Bush was getting ready to pause, the cameras were panning my part of the crowd, and people were starting to look at me funny because I wasn't going "Whoop! Whoop!" whenever Bush said something stupid. My moment had arrived, but as I cupped my hands to my mouth, no words had yet formed in my brain. What was I going to say? What one phrase would do the most to set back the cause of the GOP juggernaut?
For reasons I don't understand I imagined myself screaming out, "Dubya sodomized my granddaddy!" And instead of people with cowboy hats rustling me up like a rodeo calf, and goons in beige Yankee hats whisking me away like Sirhan Sirhan, all anybody could do was stop and stare. The Garden fell silent. Bush stopped speaking, turned, and looked at me.
And wouldn't you know it, that broke the collective spell. The delegates started to murmur among themselves. Some removed their buttons, others put down their "Support Our Troops" signs, and they all began to file out of the arena. Bush himself quietly stepped away from the podium, walked down the steps, and shook my hand. "I'm sorry, son", he said.
Within minutes, I was alone on the floor of the convention hall. Just like that, the election was turned. But as I stepped out into the streets of New York, instead of being greeted by my liberal friends as a hero, I was assailed. "Why didn't you talk about the jobs?", the IT workers said. The peace marchers cried out, "What about Iraq? Is your granddaddy more important than Iraqi children?" Gay rights advocates came forward. "We don't like the way you said 'sodomized' with such disgust!"
I fled in terror amid their cries that what I had said wasn't even the truth, and an election won by stooping to lies was not worth winning.
I woke from my reverie in time to hear Bush saying something about how we had beaten terror, and America was strong and freedom was on the march and blah, blah, blah.
I don't know what those protesters really shouted, but I'm guessing it won't get anywhere near the attention that "Dubya sodomized my granddaddy!" would have received.
11:16:20 PM 
|
