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Photos by guydonges of Madison
It may look big, but it wasn’t. I was there until just now (12:37 p.m); I am back in my room in Madison, just across the street from the Wisconsin Capitol Building. I’d say that there were hundreds of people there. Possibly a couple of thousand, if you include those coming out for lunch and watching for a bit. And scary, if you ask me. I wish you could have seen the sign carried by one protester: “OBAMA’S PLAN = WHITE SLAVERY.” I can only hope that the MSM gets it halfway right about how “successful” these “tea bag parties” actually were. The Faux Noise radio affiliate and the ABC TV station in Green Bay were representing…
Yes, I could see it from my building; I decided to go down and get a feel for what was happening. Don’t ask me who spoke, I have no idea who they were, but I would guess that some of them who spoke were certainly Republican state senators and other officials and anti-tax advocates. They also had a portable jumbotron. And then there was a older brother who got to speak as well. I shook my head. Oh, no. There is always a Steele type in everyone of these kinds of things saying, me, too! me, too!
For a while I felt rather nervous, so at first, I scribbled what I saw on signs on a credit union envelope standing next to a couple of Capitol cops. I didn’t see anyone from the Madison Police Department, but perhaps they were near what some of us call the outer ring of the Capitol Square. I could see an area where the sponsoring group, “Americans for Prosperity,” had a few tables. I’m sure there were pamphlets, leaflets and voter registration stuff there. I didn’t want to get too close to this flag-draped, crowded area. There were a lot of pot guts and gray hair under caps, although there were youth represented, hanging out and being social between getting bored and animated in turns. People looked tense, and hardly anyone smiled; although they did cheer and roar at points in the speeches. I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes, though I felt at times that I was being observed. Some of the participants were dressed in the colors of the flag and were waving flags. Others were wearing parts of what was hunting gear or Army fatigues. And then there was the guerrilla theater stuff: people dressed as walking pork with a top hat and tails, or wearing white wigs with tricorn hats waving replicas of the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that Benjamin Franklin made famous. Check out the signs below.
There were signs attacking ACORN: “Silly liberals, acorns are for squirrels!”; “Obama, get your hands out of my piggy bank!” “Obama Hood” “Obama is the Antichrist; Oust Obama!” “Proud Americans Don’t Bow to Saudi Kings” “Obama Nation is an Abomination,” and “Carry Your Own Weight, Leftist Parasites!” There were also signs demanding the recall of Governor Jim Doyle, who was one of the first Democratic governors to support Barack Obama. One spouted that Doyle couldn’t even run a lemonade stand, much less the state. Doyle had been targeted here in Wisconsin like Spiegelman was in Alabama, but he survived GOP dirty tricks. Governor Doyle is also the father of two adopted black sons, Gus and Gabe.
It ended at 1 p.m., but even when I left, it hadn’t yet begun to disperse. I was listening a bit to Ed Schultz on the Air America affiliate here before I left; he was saying that this was essentially a white man’s rebellion against Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency. He had never been more right today. Only thing is, where is all this “rebellion” going to go? It could be no more than what Louis Farrakhan did with “The Million Man March;” he frittered away his chance at black unity on rhetoric. Right now, there are just a bunch of leaders of this nutty right-wing movement, with no central figure. And a bunch of Faux Noise talkers. I would hate for all this frustration to crystallize under one or two leaders. Then, look out.
