Spanking the Donkey Dispatches from the Dumb Season

IRAQT-UP! At the D.C. Rallies, a Few Hundred Thousand Go Missing Originally published in The Beast, this piece about the February 2003 anti-war rally in Washington is included here to show one side of the beginning of the campaign season--when there was an enormous amount of idealistic political energy organized against the war. By the end of the campaign, this energy would be mostly gone--replaced with a more confused show of support for a candidate who had supported the war, John Kerry. Washington, D.C., Saturday, January 17, 2003--It is cold as a bitch out here. Journalism of any kind, in fact, is practically impossible. Less than ten minutes after arriving here at this small tree-lined park in the shadow of the Washington monument, I had to ask Beast publisher Paul Fallon for an extra pair of gloves to put on over the thin leather ones I was wearing. If you've ever tried to take notes on a legal pad in below-freezing temperatures while wearing two pairs of gloves at the same time, you can understand the obstacles I've faced. It's been a difficult morning. We had come out early that morning for the first--and most disturbing by far--of the weekend's Iraq-related protests. The main event, the anti-war protest at the mall sponsored by International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), was due to start at 11 a.m. This pre-event, scheduled for 9 a.m., was the day's journalistic appetizer, a freak show too tantalizing for any responsible press organ to ignore. It was the prowar demonstration, run by one of the most amazingly named organizations in the history of American activism. MOVE-OUT stood for Marines and Other Veterans Engaging Outrageous Un-American Traitors. The MOVE-OUT protest was like a caricature of a left-wing paranoid's idea of a staged CIA diversion. It had all the elements of a low-budget piece of fake political theater: a suspiciously high level of press participation (according to our careful count, there were eighty "protesters" and forty journalists), a pile of carefully rationed "protest" placards with high production values (a nicely airbrushed painting of George Bush in a muscle-bound Uncle Sam pose), a near-total absence of local protesters, and, last but not least, a single well-dressed, smiling, traitorous black person representing the "cause" (Kevin Martin, head of the "African-American Republican Leadership Council"). This thing was about as spontaneous as the applause for Comrade Stalin at the Fifth Party Congress. Offered the chance, I would have bet serious money that at least half of the protesters were secretaries and janitors from the NSA offices. My hands were numb because I had kept them out of my pockets for long stretches in a frantic attempt to record for posterity the amazing rhetoric of the MOVE-OUT speakers. Some of the speeches were of a type not seen since Bluto rallied the troops in Animal House. Only this wasn't slapstick comedy; this was real. Martin gave a typical speech: "Our troops have always been there for us," he said, "from the time of World War I, when our soldiers beat back the fascists in France. . . ." I turned to Paul. "France?" I said. "Fascists? What the fuck is he talking about?" Paul shrugged. "Forget it," he said. "He's on a roll." Paul and I had come down here from Buffalo to take part in the A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-war rally, and I have to admit that my expectations were low. Like most young Americans, I've been trained to think of protests and demonstrations as something shameful and vaguely embarrassing--something one outgrows, like Journey albums, or those hour-long showers you took when you were eleven and twelve. It's not hard to see why people my age (in their early thirtTaibbi, Matt is the author of 'Spanking the Donkey Dispatches from the Dumb Season', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307345714 and ISBN 0307345718.