Errata
Speaking of corrections … I think the conclusions I came to in my last post, on Sullivan’s reasons for instinctively shitting upon this weekend’s anti-war rally, may have been a little hasty. He could have been reacting to one of the event’s main organizers, a far-left group called Inernational ANSWER, whose coordinator once had nice things to say about Iraq’s “long, proud tradition of anti-colonial resistance.” According to Salon, their loopy intransigence led to some potentially rally-shattering decisions:
Then there was ANSWER’s rejection of message control — its leadership demanded that each of its component organizations be allowed to protest issues besides the war. Starting at 9 a.m., therefore, the Palestinian boosters took over Farragut Square with their own signs and chants, while bands of anarchists, affordable housing advocates, and Hugo Chavez supporters staked out intersections around D.C.’s downtown.
There was this, too:
In the frequently carnivalesque march that looped around the White House and downtown, one could spot just about any slogan imaginable, from the 9/11 conspiracy theorists to the simply unintelligible: Riding a green ladies’ bicycle, a white-bearded hippie sanctimoniously coasted past a line of stationary D.C. cops, holding aloft a poorly lettered sign reading “WHY? Motherfucker$.” Four of D.C.’s finest double over laughing in his wake. “The city prefers the officers to keep a straight face,” their sergeant said. “Sometimes that’s hard.”
The event was a success anyway, but all of this does point up one thing the Republicans have that we don’t: message discipline. It’s fraying a little now, because the message has become so ludicrously indefensible, not to mention batshit crazy, but there’s still a remarkable amount of coordination in effect not just in the halls of Republican power but outside of them, throughout the conservative media/blogosphere. We need some of that.
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