Monday, August 30, 2004
Oh! What a Lovely Antiwar
Katha Pollitt's snippets from the party-- I mean, the protests-- in New York in The Nation show what a great antiwar everyone is having:
I met people who had traveled for days to shout, "Boooo!" while sweeping past Madison Square Garden
Pink, by the way, is definitely becoming the new black of protest culture...I saw lots of pink T-shirts in the crowd. And why not? Pink carries so many meanings we like: female, gay, antimacho, peaceful, playful and, well, pinko.
There were papier-mache monsters, a giant globe, whistles and kazoos, Raging Grannies and Men without Pants (in flag-patterned boxers--hmmm, is underwear the new protest outerwear?), and endless vaginal puns on Bush.
Sticker that best sums it all up: "'Yee-ha' is not a foreign policy."
What is the subject that they are protesting? Oh, right, the forcible ending of this. But let's not bring that up, it's so dreary. The important thing is that:
Protest culture has been reborn. Our demos get better and better, our organizations smarter (thank you, United for Peace and Justice !), our crowds bigger, more diverse, more attractive to newcomers. A few years ago, the savvy word was that street protests were hopelessly old- fashioned and square, the very embodiment of the cultural stodginess of the left: Demonstrations were boring to the media and irrelevant to the young, busy with their computers and skateboards. Wrong. Yesterday's demo got lots of press and it was full of young people--to my eye at least half the crowd looked under 30.
Because "got lots of press" and "full of young people" are the two things that justify anything done on the two coasts-- the common thread that runs through every ultrachic event from The O.C. to the Manson Family murders.
When you read about the party these New York swells had, you can't help but remember the scene in the great movie My Man Godfrey where they have to acquire a "forgotten" (i.e., homeless) man as one of the "things" needed to win a scavenger hunt, and when the homeless man (William Powell) asks what the purpose of this hunt is, Carole Lombard explains:
Lombard: Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want, and in a scavenger hunt you try to find something that nobody wants.
Powell: Hmm, like a forgotten man?
Lombard: That's right, and the one who wins gets a prize, only there really isn't a prize. It's just the honor of winning, because all the money goes to charity, that is, if there is any money left over, but there never is.
Ah, the exquisite compassion of the bright young things, timelessly alive in the streets of New York yesterday.
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Katha Pollitt's snippets from the party-- I mean, the protests-- in New York in The Nation show what a great antiwar everyone is having:
I met people who had traveled for days to shout, "Boooo!" while sweeping past Madison Square Garden
Pink, by the way, is definitely becoming the new black of protest culture...I saw lots of pink T-shirts in the crowd. And why not? Pink carries so many meanings we like: female, gay, antimacho, peaceful, playful and, well, pinko.
There were papier-mache monsters, a giant globe, whistles and kazoos, Raging Grannies and Men without Pants (in flag-patterned boxers--hmmm, is underwear the new protest outerwear?), and endless vaginal puns on Bush.
Sticker that best sums it all up: "'Yee-ha' is not a foreign policy."
What is the subject that they are protesting? Oh, right, the forcible ending of this. But let's not bring that up, it's so dreary. The important thing is that:
Protest culture has been reborn. Our demos get better and better, our organizations smarter (thank you, United for Peace and Justice !), our crowds bigger, more diverse, more attractive to newcomers. A few years ago, the savvy word was that street protests were hopelessly old- fashioned and square, the very embodiment of the cultural stodginess of the left: Demonstrations were boring to the media and irrelevant to the young, busy with their computers and skateboards. Wrong. Yesterday's demo got lots of press and it was full of young people--to my eye at least half the crowd looked under 30.
Because "got lots of press" and "full of young people" are the two things that justify anything done on the two coasts-- the common thread that runs through every ultrachic event from The O.C. to the Manson Family murders.
When you read about the party these New York swells had, you can't help but remember the scene in the great movie My Man Godfrey where they have to acquire a "forgotten" (i.e., homeless) man as one of the "things" needed to win a scavenger hunt, and when the homeless man (William Powell) asks what the purpose of this hunt is, Carole Lombard explains:
Lombard: Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want, and in a scavenger hunt you try to find something that nobody wants.
Powell: Hmm, like a forgotten man?
Lombard: That's right, and the one who wins gets a prize, only there really isn't a prize. It's just the honor of winning, because all the money goes to charity, that is, if there is any money left over, but there never is.
Ah, the exquisite compassion of the bright young things, timelessly alive in the streets of New York yesterday.
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