Well, the peace protests are ORGANIZED by loonies. The Worker’s World Party? Stalinists in the 21st Century? Various Communist organizations? Hoo boy. You want to attract flies, start with a big pile of dung.
:rolleyes:
These thoughts kindly brought to you by a man who sincerely believes that the “Smokey Mountains” got their name from the air pollution caused by all the trees.
Having actually known folks with dreadlocks, I think the problem is the incorrect premise. Drumplaying dreadlocked hippies != loonies.
And while some of them are relying on Mom&Dad for support, so are some of the Harvard Business School students out there, too. Plenty of dreadlocked drumplaying hippies rely on their crappy little job down at the local coffeehouse for income, would rather be poor than be Wall Street.
But mostly I’m posting to point out my favorite part of the OP: that he’s baffled by the “disproportionate number of . . . generic people I can’t identify as part of any specific subculture.” Yeah – what’s up with them? (This could just be poorly-formed parallel structure, but it’s still funny to me).
I also like the sentence, “contrary to the popular belief of ignorant liberals, corporations are peopled with regular folks with a wide variety of political beliefs.” Would that wide variety of political beliefs include “ignorant liberals”? Are you saying that the ignorant liberals who work in corporations don’t believe that there are ignorant liberals who work in corporations? Methinks you’re trying to have your cake (claiming that corporations have lots of political variety in them) and eat it too (claiming that liberals don’t know the reality of corporate life).
Terrible OP.
Daniel
Daniel
And what’s with the guys on stilts?
Pinky: “Who are those folks, Brain?”
Brain: “People without jobs, Pinky.”
You just thought you had sigs turned off.
Um, didn’t they?
“The Cherokee Indians called the Smokies “Shanconage,” or place of blue smoke. The almost ever-present haze is created by a combination of evaporation and transpiration; the forest exhales terpenes, or hydrocarbon molecules, from oils in the plants. The haze seemed more like dark clouds to me, which isn’t surprising. The annual rainfall is roughly 80 inches on the peaks and 50 inches in the valleys.”
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2000-10-14/travel.html
See also
Yeah, I always thought Al Sharpton was doing his movement a real PR disservice by scheduling all these mass marches across the Brooklyn Bridge . . . at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesdays. Kind of sends the wrong message.
Huerta:
[hijack]
Oh God, not this one again.
First off, how do you define the word “pollution?”
Secondly, I had never heard the word “Shanconage” before, but having grown up in East Tennessee, and having spent large portions of my youth hiking about in the mountains, I can tell you that the Smokies were named because of all the fog, i.e., water vapor, which clings almost constantly to the higher elevations. I don’t know why the Cherokees referred to the Smokies as the “place of blue smoke,” but having lived there a long time, I can assure you that I never saw any blue smoke rising off the mountains.
See, now you’ve made me homesick again.
(By the way, thanks for the link. My mom lives in Gatlinburg, currently, and yes, it really is a tourist trap. But Pigeon Forge is much worse).
[/hijack]
Actually, the claim is that ignorant liberals don’t know the reality of corporate life. All the smart liberals are hip to the scene 
I’m not sure of the popular belief part, which I think could cause some confusion of whether “ignorant” was modifying “liberal”, or whether all liberals are ignorant, but this is a big country filled with ignorant people on both the conservative and liberal sides (and centrists too!), so I suppose there could be a popular belief among ignorant liberals, just as there could be a popular belief among ignorant conservatives.
Sorry, Banger – it’s just hard to figure out what those jingoistic knee-jerk conservatives are on about sometimes.
[sub]Not that I’m saying all conservatives are jingoistic or knee-jerk, mind you[/sub]
Daniel
<minor hijack>
I’m the only one who read the thread and imagined that peace protesters show up with a bunch of these Right? Tragelaphus euryceros are cute, but they’d leave a hell of a mess behind. But maybe the mess could serve as a sort of abstract “war is shit” message, I don’t know 
</minor hijack>
No of course not. But I’ve never heard of any of my coworkers or their friends ever deciding to go join a protest. I have a friend who is a trader and he’s against the war, but I would hardly expect to find him waving a “no blood for oil” banner around. Maybe they go and don’t talk about it. Idonno.
Peace rallies attract left-wing loonies.
Talk radio attracts right-wing loonies.
The loonies are everywhere, you just have to know where to look.
We had a “Pro-America/Pro-Troops” rally just outside of San Antonio that drew in excess of 8000 people from all walks of life. Bet it didn’t make the major networks. There were dreadlocks and crewcuts, ponytails and shaved heads all waving the American flag and singing. I just wish the “pro” crowd got as much coverage as the “anti” bunch, but that’s just not news worthy, is it?
Talk radio can infect those who need constant traffic reports. Casual contact is sufficient.
But, I think the whole talk radio thing is overrated. It is not even the biggest part of radio. In terms of nationally syndicated shows, I listen to Boortz and sometimes Rush with few ill effects. Savage and Dr. Laura actually make me sick, can’t tolerate them. Hannity is a robopundit. He just replays his rhetoric over and over. Can’t listen, eyes get heavy. You don’t have to agree with off beat AM radio personalities. In fact, I recommend viewing all of them as entertainment.
Some of the peace organisations, ANSWER, IAC, and UFPJ do have some questionable connections to the worst regimes and most radical ideologues. Ramsey Clark is one example. I found this neat list. Sort of a program to keep all the organisations in the peace movement straight. I could have posted something pointing out all of Ramsey Clark’s questionable associations. I thought that was funny.
Every time I see people with enough leisure to post on a message board about how some people don’t have jobs and should have better things to do, I can only chuckle.
The very title of this thread is ridiculous, perhaps I could start one entitled,“Why are most pro-Bushies pinheads?” As you can see, the mere way that I’ve framed the debate indicates an inherent bias.
Though I am unpeirced, untattoed, and undreaded, I have to say there’s nothing loony about these fashion statements. It is however, ignorant, to write people off because of the way that they dress whether they were a suit and tie or a nose ring, all you know about them is their fashion sense.
No matter who we are or what we believe in, we’re all BOUND to cringe at some of the people who share our beliefs.
Years ago, George Orwell, a serious-minded socialist, despaired the way the very word “socialism” seemed to attract every “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, `Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist” in England. What he saw as a perfectly rational movement tended to attract passionate nut jobs.
Lest you think I’m picking on socialists, I freely confess to being embarrassed regularly by the people who end up on my side. If Orwell were a Texas Republican, he might be wondering why the word “Republican” seems to attract every “pickup truck driver, Amway seller, gun toter, conspiracy theorist, Wal-mart shopper and sheet-wearer” in Texas.
So, why do we serious people invariably see our “respectable” issues commandeered by loonies? Passion is a big part of it. Most of us ordinary folks have jobs, families and responsibilities that take up a lot of our time. Very few of us can drop everything and go take part in a political protest. The people who ARE willing to do that (for ANY side of ANY issue) tend to be fanatics. I happen to think that Augusta National Country Club has a perfect right to stay all-male if that’s what its members choose, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to go to Augusta and wave a sign over the issue. Who DOES have the inclination? Why, the Klan, of course! And over the weekend of the Masters, it’s a safe bet the news media will give more coverage to Klansmen screaming at Jesse Jackson (and vice versa) than to more reasonable folk on either side.
I attend the peace rallies. I am relatively clean cut and yuppiesque. I don’t dress up. I go there because it is something that I believe in. I tend to go with some of my Quaker friends though. They typically dress comfortably for the occasion as well. The fringe are the drummers and nouveau hippies. They are still fun to be around and help keep the energy about level in addition to bringing extra media coverage which in turn helps get the message out.
Media coverage of anti-war (peace protests to me means that they are pro-war) portestors is about the same as media coverage for Gay Pride events. The most outrageous and loudest assholes get all the coverage, moving the centrists out of the picture.
Damn, didn’t catch it in time.
Anyway the unfortunate side effects are that the people who can actually speak eloquently on the issue are rarely if ever in the picture. You will never hear the people interviewed say anything like, “this war is wrong because we are attacking a country unprovoked, with the government not giving any legitimate reason, in addition to going against some of our Nato allies. The pro-war allies seem to have a large vested interest in the US and/or are subject to huge windfalls if the US wins the war or even larger downfalls if we lose.” What we hear is rhetoric from nearly brain dead teenagers stoned out of their gourd saying, “Bush is bad cuz we say so. No war for oil.” etc.