Cultural Gadfly

Went to the March on Washington-9/12 Proje-DC Tea Party-Whatever they’re calling it- shindig on Saturday. A few fun things first, because it really was fun.

Yes, the crowd size was phenomenal. Some early reports-from MSM outlets no less-were ranging up into seven figure ranges (the London Daily Mail originally said two million), but more sober estimates have since brought that number down. Still, there’s no doubt it was several hundred thousand, and easily as high as half a million. And that’s nothing to shake a stick at. I’m fond of quoting Jacobbus on political organizing, so I’ll do it again: liberals traditionally do a much better job of grassroots organizing than conservativs because hippies don’t have families. Conservatives have those things called jobs and families. So for that many folks to show up, and from all over the country and largely paying their own way, is no small matter. I was quite pleased to see a disproportionately high number of Texans. Once again, no huge numbers of professionally made signs, and everyone I met was extremely pleasant (you should expect a few a**holes at least, but there really weren’t).

I was there with a few pro-lifers (we’re working on a small right to life group in the D.C. area), and we managed to hand out over five thousand stickers, and gather a thousand or so petition signatures. It was quite encouraging, especially because the Tea Party movement started primarily as a fiscal protest against the stimulus and big government, and social conservatives haven’t piggy-backed off it a whole lot. But I think they might be starting to. Lots was made earlier in the year of the supposed rift between the Frum and Huckabee crowds, but I think that by and large the average rank and file conservative is both fiscally conservative and pro-life. In six hours, I think I spoke to two pro-choicers (and one of those might not have been a protester).

The observation which warmed the Cincinnatus in me was on the Metro. The night before the protest there were already tons of protestors in the city, and the Metro (coming home fairly late, close to 8 PM) was at least twice as crowded, and if you’ve spent any time in D.C. you can easily pick the residents (there aren’t D.C. natives really) from the out of towners. Not only were there plenty of people wearing tea party shirts (and the rarely seen American Flags) and constantly looking at maps to orient themselves, but the tea partiers looked like…normal people. Your average Beltway Crowd looks like either a yuppie student, a bureaucrat, or an ambitious Type A professional with a law degree they paid too much for. They walk quickly and always seem somewhat uptight and composed. The Tea Partiers looked like any family you might see walking through a shopping mall in anytown U.S.A.

Saturday morning I caught a bus to the Pentagon and Metro’d into the city. As usual lately (ever since the big crash back in June), the Metro decided to break down and I had to wait almost twenty minutes. While staring at the damn board showing the time till the next train which couldn’t decide if one was seven minutes away or fifteen, I started chatting with another passenger. He seemed like a normal guy, ex-military, just annoyed that he had to go into work on a Saturday. Then we both turned to see two Tea Partiers walking in, very obviously carrying signs. The guy immediately let loose: “Geez, not those crazy right-wingers!” Heh, awkward. While still chatting, he asked me why I was going into the city on a Saturday. Playing the tact card I mentioned the pro-life movement and going to the Tea Party to “watch” for work (sorta true I guess). It evidently satisfied him because for the rest of the ride in he kept pointing out tea party signs to me and making fun of them, pretty much to peoples faces. He was very amused by a “Original Right Wing Extremists” shirt which showed the Founding Fathers. While not terribly surprising to find him a liberal D.C. resident, his open scorn and hostility (it seemed like he was trying to pick fights with the tea partiers, though none rose to the challenge) was revealing.

And I almost forgot: he was going into work because he’s the copy editor of Stars and Stripes.

Funny stuff that.

Categories: Culture, Culture of Life, Main Stream Media, Miscellany \\ Tags: Conservatives, D.C., Liberals, March on Washington, Media, Tea Party, Washington