This thread at Chicago Boys is one of the best things I’ve ever read. Oh, and I use the word “best” quite often to mean “eye searingly terrible”. It starts off with our intrepid hero, Shannon Love, buying into the discredited “two million teabaggers OMGZ best protest ever” line. Then, he says this:
Getting hundreds of thousands of kids, the professionally unemployed and government workers to show up isn’t that hard (especially if someone buys the bus tickets). Getting two million middle-class, middle-aged people with jobs, careers, children and businesses is way, way more impressive.
We can safely assume that for every individual who made it to the protest that there are dozens of people whose grown-up obligations prevented them from attending.
So even if it wasn’t two million, it was at least four hundred bajillion, because all conservatives are grownups who just couldn’t make it because they had to take their children to football practice, go grocery shopping and then sign a contract for a hundred thousand parts and a new storefront. Also, completely pointless generalizations are fun, as all the Presbyterians who love grape juice tell me all the time. It is remarkable how in a properly functioning free market, conservatives maintain full self-employment until taxes are raised even a tenth of a percent, at which point they all turn into destitute welfare recipients. I think I see a solution here…
Next, commenter Pam K opines that perhaps advertisers should start courting these responsible, business-owning, child-rearing conservatives. Although, if they all left all of those weighty obligations behind to go halfheartedly wave Gadsden flags around while you talk about getting revenge on Barack Obama like he gave you a swirly, are they really that awesome?
It is true that these people look like they have jobs and are paying for family purchases. Why are the major networks ignoring this story or minimizing it? If I was an advertiser on one of those networks, those photos would start me reconsidering how to direct my advertising budget.
Nobody appeals to middle-class white people with kids and jobs…nobody!
Even better, via Jonathan, there was absolutely no coordination in getting people to this rally, especially not on behalf of a nationwide cable network or a well-financed political organization:
I don’t see why the “people with jobs” comment is offensive. Leftist demonstrations tend to be dominated by organized agitators, often professionals (Acorn, ANSWER, union groups, etc.). I don’t see any comparable organized participation by conservative or Republican groups in conservative demos. I see, on the contrary, widespread promotion of these events among unaffiliated individuals. Certainly, t-shirt uniforms, mass-printed signs and obvious orchestration by extremist groups — all prevalent at leftist demos — are absent at the tea parties.
Also absent: trash. I shit you not - one of the talking points coming out of this is that conservative activists are so respectful and so amazing that they left not even a speck of trash behind, even though there were so many of them that Washington, D.C. temporarily became the most populated city on Earth.
Brett says that as far as political speech goes, actually showing up and protesting is the most important thing ever. Except not in the case of the Iraq War, because as we’ve determined, all of those people were unemployed, and we apportion votes based on earnings and such:
People with jobs travelling from all over the country would represent a pretty high factor in this calculus. Since this was clearly the largest rally in Washington in decades (according to police), that would represent a big chunk of the electorate.
The police released no official estimate. As such, I contend that the police said there were 14 people there, and three of those were blind dates.
David Foster says that liberals come to these things to get their sex on, and conservatives are all married with children and jobs, and so come out only to protest, but not to surreptitiously grind themselves against the lady with the “Capitalism Paid For These” halter top on:
“Progressive” demonstrations are to a certain extent social events, which considerable numbers of people attend because it’s what’s done in their circle and, especially in the case of college-age people, to meet of the opposite sex.
Since there is no long-standing protest culture among conservatives & libertarians, such motivations are largely to be less important among them and hence, the threshold of interest in an issue necessary to get them to come out is considerably higher.
Liberal protests are the equivalent of putting a stamp on a preprinted postcard, basically.
Letalis Maximus provides ironclad anecdotal evidence that hundreds of millions of conservatives did not come because they were too busy bringing low prices to their congregations before they baked pies for the sock hop:
I would have gone. But I had to get back home and change out the clutch on my pick-up (and no, it does not have a gun rack in it, nor does it have tobacco juice stains running down the side) and try to save several hundred dollars in repair bills.
Shannon Love shows back up, apparently drunk and trying to rationalize the earlier comment that two million people showed up:
Even so, that pretty impressive for people with jobs and responsibilities who don’t from subculture in which protest are part of the social calendar.
The important thing is that with these protest, the ratio of people not at the rallies but who the ideas of the protestors is much higher than in your average leftwing protest in which the ration of professional activist and protestors is much higher.
Yeah, I wish who our ideas is was much higher in terms of our ration. Why from subculture? Make for happiness, but stars go!
Sgt. Mom (who obviously couldn’t go as she was leading a battalion and doing laundry…at her small business) tries for another go at the ratio:
And for every protester (with a job!) who was on the Mall on Saturday, how many were there who wanted to be there, but couldn’t afford it, had family or jobs commitments that couldn’t be set aside. Ten, fifteen, twenty?
A hundred, let’s say. I negotiate good.
Marty uses the pee test:
Estimates of 60-70k are ridiculously low. A third to half that many were waiting in line at the porta potties midway through the rally.
Yep, there were 35 thousand people in line at the porta potties, because without kids, everyone forgot to pee before they left.
Tyouth takes the whole “elite” thing and embraces it:
Rarely hearing an elitist comment from a liberal may be because they are more rarely elite. A liberal protest crowd is younger and has a greater number of individuals in it who will profit, monetarily by the adoption of the cause they protest for or against. A more conservative crowd (”people w jobs”) will have fewer of these types of people.
Older folks are more practical and are more balanced in their outlook having observed history and learned in the slow but efficient institution of “hard knocks”. The conservative crowd are not union members or special interest groups who will benefit from object of the protest. The conservative group will generally want to be left alone and desire maximize personal freedom without wanting something additional from on high.
So it is fair, IMO, to call the conservative crowd “elite” although I doubt few individuals in the crowd would describe themselves that way. Being elite isn’t a bad thing hippieprof.
So, conservative protesters showed up to protest for something which they won’t benefit from, and marched in a large group of millions in order to be left alone, and the only way you benefit from a protest’s purpose is because you don’t have a job. Or something. I want more Shannon Love.
As this starts to get redundant (except for a really fun part in the middle where someone links to a comparison between the inauguration and the teabagger protest by using pictures which correspond to neither event), let’s skip forward to the coup de grace, courtesy of Phifl63:
Yes, I will be civil. Thank you. The qualifier “with jobs” is the kicker. Leftists and liberal protestors do tend to be filthy, unemployed hippie types, and low-life minorities. Please let us not stop calling a spade a spade. If the shoe fits, you wear it. Sorry if anyone is offended, but trying to deny that the barbarians are past the gate and among us is foolhardy and did not work for the Romans. New Orleans during and after Katrina shows us what savagery awaits us if we continue in our denial. The D.C. protestors reaffirm my faith that decent, civilized citizens still dominate our country.
Now, despite the fact that this guy just said that savage minorities are going to eat all those children and employees the teabaggers left behind (ANOTHER REASON THEY DON’T PROTEST!!!), Shannon Love takes on the real point:
That’s not true. If it was, they wouldn’t be dangerous. Instead a lot of them are well but miseducated upper income and highly articulate and persuasive individuals who believe themselves on a sacred mission to save the rest of us from our own worse natures.
Those are the dangerous ones.
Really, the danger isn’t from all the mud people stuck at the welfare office between bouts of cannibalism, it’s all the white people who hold their chains and will unleash them on teabaggers’ newly sunburnt, tender flesh.
I leave you with that thought, friends.
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I can feel my blood pressure rising whilst reading this. Yes, these people are so civil. Just look at them!
I would have LOVED to drop these mouthbreathers off in Southeast, signs and all.