Godwin’s Law aside, this, compared and contrasted with this, despite attempts to debunk it here, is a little scary, I’d venture…
One poster on the (admittedly shrill) forum linked above says :
If you can’t stand up and silently protest in this country without being led away by police, the game is over for America.
I would be inclined to agree.
Category:
Politics Chafe My Scrote
I should probably post this on MeFi, but there’s a lot of strange people over there.
The original posting at the Democratic Underground is about as bad as the postings on SFSU. “First person” reporting based on extreme bias.
If I’m afraid of anything, it’s the fact that a person was arrested over a month ago and denied due process of law based on the signature of Bush.
Or the fact that both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are blindly supporting Bush’s frightening new Homeland Security Agency.
Disruption of the ceremony would have been illegal, and therefore subject to arrest. This has been a known fact within colleges for decades, long before these kids graduated from college.
I guess I’d have to agree, BB. To quote one of the posters (and I’m quoting here – I don’t even know what the 4rth, 5th and 6th amendments say, or if there is a valid argument that Ashcroft has transgressed them) on that DU forum, who expressed some surprise that people were as upset about this as they seem to be:
——————snip
> Bush & Co. may have allowed 3000+ people die
murmur murmur murmur
> Bush & Co. rescind no-first-strike Nuke Ban
murmur murmur murmur
> Bush & Co. rescind Kyoto Treaty
murmur murmur murmur
> Ashcroft suspends 4th Amendment
murmur murmur murmur
> Ashcroft suspends 5th Amendment
murmur murmur murmur
> Ashcroft suspends 6th Amendment
murmur murmur murmur
>OSU demands cheers for the President
EXPLOSIONS OF OUTRAGE, PROTEST
————snip
to that I’d add your two examples, and a host of others.
I would question if silently turning one’s back constitutes a disruption, but perhaps that’s splitting hairs…
In the Metafilter thread I linked, chino says :
“At my graduation, from the Bush alma mater, Dubya’s daddy spoke. Most of the forestry school stood and turned their backs, as did a few people throughout the crowd. Their right to dissent was respected, and there were very few comments directed their way.”
This would seem to indicate that this form of protest is not actually illegal, as you suggested above, BB.
Standing silently and turning back isn’t disruption – yells, waving placards, blaring through a horn, that’s disruption.
You can’t arrest a person for being silent and turning one’s back. Even in Ohio. According to the WaPost article, it seemed the campus authorities were more concerned about people making noise. Hard to say since no one did anything and no one was arrested.
However, what you said about how we’re ignoring these big issues for such trivial BS – that I agree with. I think Bush and his administration is the scariest SOB I’ve seen. If we want to get outraged, there’s plenty of things to get outraged about.
Personally, if Bush is elected again, I want to imigrate…somewhere.
But he loves his wife, and is a good family man.
Hmmm…
I’ll take a lecher who genuinely cares for his country and is smart to boot over a santimonious, paranoid, idiotic, war mongering, jackass who loves his wife any day of the week. And twice on sundays for all the Fundamentalists in the crowd.
When I get settled in St. Louis, I really must learn to be more forceful in expressing my opinion of Bushie, Asscroft, Reamsfield, and the Energy mafia.
Say Bearman, hows the IT biz in Canada these days…
Wrong guy to ask right now, Shelley, but I keep threatening to kick my ass out the door to find out…
We have our share of idiots
… in power north of the border too…
(Wrong comments thread, Ike, but anyway…)
I’ve always been someone who enjoyed and was good at speaking in public, finding the right words to get a group of people excited about or interested in what I was saying. I know this is not a common thing. But it’s probably why I’m a good teacher, and why I was chosen to do so many client presentations back when I was in the IT industry.
There’ve actually been a couple of Old Media appearances, audiovisual and otherwise, from some of the Big Hitters in our little blogworld, that have left me cold, because, primarily, the speakers seemed unaware of what it might take to excite the imaginations of people outside our Tribe, you know?
You don’t have to be a salesman or a marketer to transmit excitement about something, all you have to be is, well, excited, reasonably articulate, and honest. And always aware of who you’re talking to…the radio appearance (actually I’ve collapsed a few into one, here, for the purposes of trying to make a point) of which I spoke almost made me, someone who is thrilled by the order emerging out of chaos, the community growing out of a wilderness of self-interested voices, someone who (and this is where people could rightly accuse me of petty jealousies, but I don’t much care) feels pretty confident that he could get up on whatever soapbox he might be offered and deliver off-the-cuff speeches that would make ordinary non-geek people thrilled about the concept of weblogging and all the ideas that are accreting around it, almost made me bored about the whole idea. That was disappointing.
Thus endeth the bitch session.
Oops. Sorry about the misplaced comments. I was chewing gum and walking at the same time, never a good combination.
I have to agree with you in that it wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard, but I think nervousness really comes into play when you’re on the spot like that. I can see from what little I know of you that you’d be a natural in front of a lot of people (a real gift); I wouldn’t – in school I was one who would deliberatly take a failing grade rather than get up and face my classmates for an extemporaneous speech or a book report – just the thought of it still is sheer terror. I know if I were on the radio (which I would never be!) I would be dripping with sweat and stuttering like a moron, and even if I were honest, articulate, and excited, like you say, I think the self-consciousness and uncomfortableness of my situation would be the thing that would come across on the air. Possibly it’s the same for others.
I wonder sometimes how involved the Big Dogs really are with weblogging now. Maybe they’re burned out, but can’t quit.
BTW, Stavros, you, I, and jonathon are about the only people who criticized Meg’s article. What exactly does that say about the neighborhood? Are we troublemakers?
Bearman, there must be a country one can get excited in…somewhere…
Iconomy : I agree and totally understand, and that’s why I haven’t named any names. I know for a fact that one of the people that I’m referring to was nervouser-than-hell. But, like I said in my little rant, lead or get out of the way. I’m a bastard like that.
BB : There’s an uncomfortable amount of sycophancy that happens, one of the few things in Dvorak’s old (by blogging standards) anti-blog rant a while back that I thought was worthy of paying attention to. Whether it’s the ‘a-list’ or the ‘cluetrainers’ who are the butt-owners (and I have tons, freaking oodles of respect for some of those people, based on what they’ve done rather than what clique they belong to), there are a LOT of people out there that figure the best way to make their voices heard is to kiss famous ass…
Did I mention how smart and damn good-lookin’ you are?
Heh.
Also : are we troublemakers?
I think we (and the folks in our virtual neighbourhood) might be poets who are also geeks, dreamers drunk on beauty, truth and friendship who can also get off on elegant code, tight design, or the newest tech innovation.
But also, yeah, shit-disturbers, I guess.
Stavros, did I ever tell you that you are a mad, bad, beautifully sad poet with excellent taste?
Heh.
Battle on, fair spirit. Battle on. And take no prisoners.
Case in point, to illustrate what I was talking about : Dave Winer says “the blogging piece we’ve been waiting for”, and I see that phrase repeated at least half a dozen times in the extracts in the citations list on the Daypop, for links to Meg’s article. Two ego-strokes for the price of one! Woo hoo!
And : We? We who? Who ‘we’ he say, who?
Sorry, I’ve had too much coffee.