Comments on Open Letter to the People with the Megaphone and Orange Bandanas and the "Stop the War Now, Impeach Bush for War Crimes" Poster Out on Broadway Right Now

Calm down, sweetie. This too shall pass. You know there are advantages to living on the Hill (don't have to drive home from the bars being the most obvious). This is one of the disadvantages.

Do not fear, team June Bee is hear!
We are headed to Broadway this instant and will report back 0200 hrs. Our team enjoys debating and we love all colors (with a slight disagreement on taupe, given my prom date's choice of dress, along with her choice to bring her chubby dateless friend along - ok time had by all). Engage!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution

Not even three years ago...

as i passed on the bus, equally not wanting to hear this shit after i get off a long week of work:

"ARE YOU GONNA LET HIM DO THAT?!
YOU SHOULDN'T LET HIM DO THAT."

i actually turned republican right then.

They should go to Bellevue and try their shit...

I am laughing, though I bailed out after about 3 paragraphs. Orange? I think not.

Reading this was a useless waste of part of an already low-value Friday night.

Navel-gazing with new relevance.

Dutch power!

Gee, on my side of the Hill, the Anti-Bush protesters only come out on Friday mornings - I've never seen them wear orange and they don't use bullhorns either.

Aside from that, and the semi-regular weapons discharges, things are pretty quiet over here...

Orange?!? You've got to be kidding! Something must be done.

Next Friday I'm showing up in blue. The proper impeachment color and show those guys how to make some noise.

Covert marketing for ING? I had the sudden urge to get a high yeild savings account...

Yes, to paraphrase the old anti-nuke poster--one pointless, trillion-dollar war CAN ruin you're whooooooole day.

LMAO! ING! LMAO!

seriously though, I cant stand those fucks that preach to the choir on bush.

I must live by the right end of Broadway, 'cuz I missed them. Phew. Seriously, don't they understand they have even less impact on public opinion than the Christian douchebag who periodically shows up with a "REPENT" sign on Broadway?

I feel like i am becoming more conservative because of the inane ineffective liberal bullshit that goes on here all the time!

It's just the Capitol Hill bubble, @16. Spend a little time out in Lewis County and you'll remember why you're not a Republican again.

@16... i totally agree. after seeing yet another sign for "end the war. stop hunger. drive out the bush regime! come to our neighborhood picnic" poster, i just gave up on being a straight-ticket democrat.

Fuck. I was wearing orange tonight -- kinda red-orange -- but it was a coincidence, Chris, I swear. I was also under your window an hour ago. But I wasn't chanting, I swear.

I'd be joining in the head scratching if we actually had an active anti war movement or a Democratic Party that wasn't still giving president Cheney every thing he asks for for his war and a Democratic Party that wasn't still compromising on torture and the right to know the charges and see a judge when you are put in jail.

Since this is the state of affairs, your superior airs sound kind of pathetic. Are you doing something more effective with all your might? Or do you even care? This is such a typical Stranger aesthetic.

@17 and @18:Y ou are sounding like just the kind of image-over-substance voters that got Bush/Cheney the last few votes they needed to push themselves over the top.

do you have any values or principles of your own or do you play everything like an issue of what's an acceptable hairstyle?

Um Chris? You just sort of announced your address out there.

Uh, not that I think it's the greatest way to make a point, so don't shoot the messenger, but I think Orange was chosen because it is the color prisoners wear at Guantanamo Bay. I think the idea is to show solidarity with the "illegal combatants". Wearing Orange signifies that we too are prisoners of this Administration.

Or something like that.

You know, @20 is the worst comment because it's the most truthful here, and god that's sad.

I agree with 20. What you have to remember is that protests like this are, in fact, not aimed at Bush supporters but at people who would say they are against Bush and his policies but rarely if ever speak up or stand up against them (and voting Democratic doesn't count). Silence might as well be consent.

Encouraging people to wear a certain color on a certain day is a small way to show to demonstrate the numbers of people who feel a certain way about a subject, something even those who insist on going about their lives as if nothing were wrong can do.

still though, encouraging people who already DIDNT vote for bush, already dont like bush, and already will be voting democratic party to drive bush out, is stupid.

you need to convince the people who support the fucker to stop. preaching to the choir, especially on capitol hill is a waste of time and effort. unless you're suggesting that we who oppose bush start getting violent, etc.

and thats the problem. what does speaking out actually mean? especially if they arent afraid of being deposed? come off it. the only way to actually influence politicians is to threaten their re-election and/or their jobs. and you do that by encouraging people to not vote for them, which is what we are already doing.

You can call it, Dispatches From The Style Zone. Yes, there's an unjustified war on and we're the aggressors, but it's far important to criticize the color choices of anti-war protesters and their ungainly solgans. You can do a lot for these people, Christopher. With your casually lovely attire and just by being your fine self, you can bring the troops home without lifting a pinkie. Protesters can then retire to work on their posture and diction. With the money they save on no more orange suits, they can afford good haircuts and maybe even a gym. Regina

zzz gibberish

smoke better dope

zzzzz
drivel, christopher
get a better bag next time

As a non-USian, it has surprised me reading Slog lately how much internet space is taken up (columns and comments) with critisicing the way protesters are protesting the war. It reminds me of the criticism of the Women's Lib movement in the '70s; 'advice' to angry women that they'd lure more flies with honey than vinegar, that being more docile and lady-like would make them better role models, that all the anger and vitriol was turning off the very people who could help them, etc.

Nice.

Protests worked in the civil rights era because they showed Americans that lots of people supported civil rights and that those that did were just like them. The image of people getting attacked by dogs because they wanted to eat at a lunch counter or go to the good school is quite powerful.

Today we have prolific opinion polls so showing politicians the level of support through protest is like doing a scientific study by anecdote. The protesters are also failing to make the anti-war movement look mainstream with their annoying obsession with puppets, dumb costumes, and weird desire to cover their face with a bandanna as if they are some kind of pretend revolutionary.

Instead of showing the Country that "normal" people are tired of this war too and I don't know actually trying to educate, they show them that its the same hippies, communists, and pseudo-revolutionaries we've all come to love. That coupled with fucking up traffic and keeping them from their families likely moves them more toward the pro-war column.

What, are they Basque?

D @ 31, I don't see the parallel you're trying to draw. Is CF trying to get them to tone down their protests, be more compliant, or something like that?

EKSwitaj @ 25, voting Democratic DID count in 2004 and 2006. You might be able to make the claim that it doesn't in 2008 but everyone who voted that way in 04 and 06 had every reasonable expectation that the Dems would have done something effective about the war. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. And you don't have a crystal ball - something might happen next session, not that I'm holding my breath.

You're the idiot who chose to live at a busy intersection. Stop complaining dumbass.

I'm wearing orange today ... because that's the color of the t-shirts they make the kids wear at the day-camp I work for.

So all the whiny 6-yos are really ineffectual subversive Bush protesters?
Wow.

It's very simple, Christopher. Next time someone's chanting about wearing orange, you just invite a bunch of Northern Irish Catholics over, and pretty soon the protestors will be bloody in the streets.

Orange seems like a popular color this year. Doesn't anyone else remember how people were supposed to wear orange that one Friday after the Cho guy shot up his fellow students at that university? Yah, at least they are doing something. They caused all of us to react in some way. I think stirring the mud is good most of the time. People who don't like noise should live far out in the country with no neighbors. Maybe you would have liked them more if they were wearing suits instead of orange. No idea.

It's better to protest in front of media centers - TV, print.

Like everybody else in the world I don't like W either, but the louder people are about it, the more they don't have their own lives under control. I know one guy who bitches about Bush, Cheney, and those other assholes incessantly. He doesn't even shower and he drinks way too much. He also refers to The Beatles and Zeppelin as "contemporary music." (No shit.) He's not the only one, as I'm sure these orange-loving jerks were fine specimens of humanity.

its not even their own lives under control. it'd be like the people of watts california protesting racial discrimination in watts california. of course black people dont like racial discrimination! go tell it to whitey damnit!

I have four possible answers to D @ 31:

1.Has the country you lived in ever had a "Vietnam war" that allowed its citizens to make the word "hippie" taboo and synonymous with "protester"? If not, good for you. Seriously. That's one thing about the U.S. that makes me sad. Hippies can be parodies, but so much so many other types of political persuasions, but Americans made a sport of demaning "the hippie", even people who are basically hippies but just aren't as extroverted as the stereotype suggests make fun of hippies. I'm wondering if that accent never existed if protests in the U.S. in general would be taken more seriously, and thus would have serious suggestions to "dress nicely" at protests. (WTF??)

2.Has your country ever had a GWB to rule over you for 8 years that made you feel such despair about politics in your country that you just can't stand ANY form of political voice anymore?

3.So, really, no one in your country complains about protests methods at all? Granted, I'm not representing every country here, but from Canada to New Zealand to Australia to France, I've heard friends there make a sport about talking about how lame protests and strikes are there.

4.Sad that Women's Lib, following the honey-not-vinegar advice or not, hasn't come as far as it should. It seems "women" rank alongside "hippie" as far as being taken seriously, which is the saddest thing about the U.S. out of everything.

Part of me wants to slap you for complaining. You chose to live over a busy intersection in the densest neighborhood in Seattle. Deal with it. Or move to Port Townsend.

Part of me agrees with you completely. I drove by these douchebags around 7:00 last night. And I thought to myself: what? Is Capitol Hill a secret enclave of Bush supporters, and I've been completely unaware of it? Thank god these morons are here, changing the minds of all the Bush supporters on Capitol Hill with their effective protest. *rolls eyes* It wasn't even preaching to the choir. More like an embarrassment to the choir.

@3 It's nice that they're invoking the Orange Revolution, but what they're asking people to do is pretty much the opposite of a revolution. They're not asking people to take up arms, make connections within a sympathetic military, cultivate the opposition party and prepare them to take over after the government falls, and then bringing about a popular uprising.

They're asking people to wear orange. Pathetic.

Beware of enterprises requiring your wardrobe color to be unrhymable.

wear burberry to stop global warming!

The same constitution that protects your writing and paper (and thus allowing my 14yo daughter to pick it up and read about the glorification of pot smoking and the word "fuck" 75 times) protects those “orange wearing” protestors.

Protesters on the street, no matter how crazy are the true "Sounds of Freedom" in this country. They want to bitch about wearing orange? Whatever. They have a right to fashion disasters if they want. Accept that.

My uncle who is a card carrying member of the John Birch Society thinks gays and lesbians should be rounded up and sent to jail for sodomy because their very existence in the U.S. is “invasive” and their mere existence "offends and saddens him in his own home." So be glad that the sounds you hear outside your windows for a couple of hours are protestors and not police rounding up “undesirables” and shipping them off to a ghetto every day.

So Chris, why don’t you shut the fuck up, quit your whining and enjoy the sounds of freedom no matter how immature the message.

Also, when the constitution falls I’ll be the first one lining Belle and Sebastian up against the wall and putting a couple of rounds in them because that shit isn’t even music and nobody should have to endure it.

I lived in the fourth floor corner of that building in the 1980's. My rent was $275. And it was clots of Christians down on the street then that would drive me nuts with their bullhorns.