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Thursday, September 02, 2004Helping George W. Bush to Carry the DayCLICK HERE TO SEE A PAGE OF PICTURES OF THE DEMONSTRATION
And Some Video courtesy of Dan Darling I think Bush bashers are clearly in the overkill zone. They are becoming his best vote earners...  The demonstrations against the Republican Convention in NYC might help George W. Bush to be re-elected. I don’t know –and I really would like to know- if the Bush campaign managers chose NYC to have their convention looking exactly for this or if it was just a fortunate coincidence, sheer luck. Machivelian craftiness or not, NYC was about the best place in the whole US where you could get that enormous number of tattooed, bodypierced, red flag waving weirdoes shouting obscenities at your candidate. And shout they did. according to all the accounts…
Even from Paris –or perhaps because of my being here- some vague instinct was telling me that Bush bashing was getting close to the top of the hill, fatally nearing the ill-omened overkill. Well, I think the demonstrators in NYC may be on the verge of influencing millions of normal Americans into thinking that keeping Bush in the White House might be a good idea after all, to judge on what kind of people are demonstrating against him and how. All and every single interest group in the country, every thinkable and unthinkable marginal bunch of eccentrics, off-beat tribe, outlandish troupe was out there, calling Bush every conceivable insulting thing.  Sure, the Peoria Chapter of Drag queens, the anarchist collective of Evanston Illinois, and hundreds of likeminded groups from across the country converged to NYC; but then, the Big Apple has the absolutely best collection in the world of that sort of people. Free-choice chapters, AIDS activists, civil rights groups, chicano unions, the Zapatista support group from Gary, Indiana, all with their own signs and yelling a cacophony of do this, forbid that, Bush ****, Bush @@@@, all dancing at the rhythm of dissident Hare-Krishnas (Hare, Hare) drums. Alice’s mad rabbit riding athwart on a seven wheel bike with a monstrous poster of Bush travestied into Adolf Hitler and some fully tatooed guys selling "George Bush is the Antichrist T-shirts.
I had a daydream featuring the most radical crazies of that improbable crowd, all masked and tossing stones at the cops while Bush’s campaign people were at Sardy's tossing down the most expensive grand crus from Nappa to celebrate the best judoka PR electoral grand slam in decades. And free, mind you, absolutely free, paid for by the democratic voting New Yorkers (the cops’ salaries) and by the demonstrators. In the middle of the carnival thousands upon thousands of normal people, normal Americans who do want Kerry to win the election, disappeared, obliterated by the weirdoes. And then, of course, if you are the average reporter trying to make a living with a camera, you always prefer to shoot the weirdo rather than Mr. Suburban Father of Three With A Mortgage to Pay.  The picture of Michael Moore and Rev. Jackson here doesn’t lie. They both know what is going very wrong with that demonstration and understand very well that every picture, every footage of that is giving votes away to their arch-enemy.
The whole thing is very unfortunate. American democracy is much more that that. In fact, it is something else. And if a candidate wins an election because of the people who demonstrate against him it is wrong! I want some debate on issues, not a competition to see who can better put to use the bag of dirty communicational tricks (with M. Moore-Goebbels as the judge?) UPDATE FROM THE CONTRA COSTA TIMES New York hasn't seen the same unchecked violence on the part of either police or protesters as in the Illinois and Florida conventions, but when it comes to sheer numbers, it's now surpassed them both. Go, Marie, go! George W. thanks you so much!
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