Been a busy few days...
There's time at last to pick up my pen (don't you love that anachronism?).
My first thought concerns the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull. Say that five times fast, and then let's hear some of those smartass remarks about Welsh.
I was in Boston last Wednesday, at a midday meeting on Boston Common. My teabag crowd estimate placed it at around the start-finish crowd for the Tufts 10k: that's busy but way short of the hyped 20,000. Those of us with business up by Park Street hardly knew the teabag rally was even happening. There were news helicopters, of course, but no more than for your average three-alarm fire.
It's unfortunate (and a missed opportunity for the Democrats) that a healthy Populist uproar has been hijacked by a combination of seriously psychotic people and corporate puppet-masters. Wednesday was a good example of the results. People headed toward the rally seemed mainly to be to be my age and up. People who didn't even have to deliberately ignore this little zit of a rally were of all ages, but predominantly younger. It is a case of manipulated older people, enabling the vilest forms of extremism, and thus alarming and offending wider and wider segments of the population. Although revolutions can be made by minorities, they have been organised minorities. A successful revolution resonates on more than a couple of issues with a centre that shares some of its concerns.
Apropos the event. I didn't realise, until watching the news coverage, one reason the rally made so little stir a quarter mile away: it didn't make much noise. One reason it didn't, I saw, was that its keynote speaker has a remarkably poor voice for someone of her experience. I don't mean the fake folksy dialect. I mean she simply cannot project. That's an unfortunate shortcoming for a wannabe rabble-rouser. Almost as unfortunate as her biggest conundrum. How do you pretend to run for president of a country that many of your followers (including your spouse) want to dismantle?
Later: what a pity, the packing porkies rally in Virginia turned out a couple of dozen would-be rebels who mostly shouted for one another's benefit. And what happened to a planned packing rally in DC? The police wouldn't let them! This rebellion is a few bricks short of a load. The DC revolutionists went unarmed and so blended in, no doubt, with the average April tourist crowd in Washington.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, a re-enactor of the Lexington-Concord fight died of cardiac arrest. I'd say that individual was more focused and principled than any of the packers or teabags.
My first thought concerns the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull. Say that five times fast, and then let's hear some of those smartass remarks about Welsh.
I was in Boston last Wednesday, at a midday meeting on Boston Common. My teabag crowd estimate placed it at around the start-finish crowd for the Tufts 10k: that's busy but way short of the hyped 20,000. Those of us with business up by Park Street hardly knew the teabag rally was even happening. There were news helicopters, of course, but no more than for your average three-alarm fire.
It's unfortunate (and a missed opportunity for the Democrats) that a healthy Populist uproar has been hijacked by a combination of seriously psychotic people and corporate puppet-masters. Wednesday was a good example of the results. People headed toward the rally seemed mainly to be to be my age and up. People who didn't even have to deliberately ignore this little zit of a rally were of all ages, but predominantly younger. It is a case of manipulated older people, enabling the vilest forms of extremism, and thus alarming and offending wider and wider segments of the population. Although revolutions can be made by minorities, they have been organised minorities. A successful revolution resonates on more than a couple of issues with a centre that shares some of its concerns.
Apropos the event. I didn't realise, until watching the news coverage, one reason the rally made so little stir a quarter mile away: it didn't make much noise. One reason it didn't, I saw, was that its keynote speaker has a remarkably poor voice for someone of her experience. I don't mean the fake folksy dialect. I mean she simply cannot project. That's an unfortunate shortcoming for a wannabe rabble-rouser. Almost as unfortunate as her biggest conundrum. How do you pretend to run for president of a country that many of your followers (including your spouse) want to dismantle?
Later: what a pity, the packing porkies rally in Virginia turned out a couple of dozen would-be rebels who mostly shouted for one another's benefit. And what happened to a planned packing rally in DC? The police wouldn't let them! This rebellion is a few bricks short of a load. The DC revolutionists went unarmed and so blended in, no doubt, with the average April tourist crowd in Washington.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, a re-enactor of the Lexington-Concord fight died of cardiac arrest. I'd say that individual was more focused and principled than any of the packers or teabags.
posted by Uncle | 12:59
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