Wanted: Unruly Activists
by Nicholas Von Hoffman

The first thing the members of Congress did before they heard the testimony of General David Petraeus, the Administration’s new political point man on the war, was to throw the members of Code Pink out of the room. The Code Pinkers are those obnoxious females wearing their eponymously colored T-shirts with end-the-killing slogans on them.

The women of Code Pink are liable to pop up at any solemn public gathering demanding peace at the top of their voices. They are unable to understand that elected officials are better informed and wiser than they are and thus they mistakenly dis people important enough to warrant bodyguards.

During Code Pink’s brief moment in the sun, several Republican members of Congress groused to House Arms Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D. Mo) about the scandalous trouble-makers. American politicians, who these days are equipped with security details, have come to regard political heckling as a misdemeanor of greater gravity even than making a pass at an undercover cop in a men’s room. Heckling used to be an inseparable part of public debate and, once upon a time, a politician was judged in part by his ability to come through with the kind of humorous riposte that sets audiences to laughing and the hecklers to the sidelines. Lincoln, Churchill and Disraeli were masters at it.

The Code Pinkers are playing what ESPN would call Extreme or X-politics. X-politicians make noise, bust up meetings, chain themselves to furniture, do the big floppola in front of the security personnel and wail like hell when they are dragged off. Most of us are incapable of playing X-politics, but thank God the women of Code Pink are not.

You don’t play X-politics because you want a new school superintendent or a stop sign on your block. You play it when it’s about war, about dying, maiming and mass misery on a scale too large for any mind to encompass. You play it because the war party always has all the drums and all the bugles and all the flags. You play it because somebody has to smash through, be the truth-teller. And it’s not going to be people with normal temperatures and Anglo-Saxon inhibitions.

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The essence of X-politics, whether it’s Cindy Sheehan or Eli Pariser, one of MoveOn.org’s better known people, is to use the other sides’ rage, money and status against itself.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/13/3813/

Thank you Ladies, for having the 'nads to stand up and let your voices be LOUDLY heard! Long live the Tutu and Tiara! And DOWN with cheney*/bush*!

Wake up, America!