Posted on 08/20/2004 7:34:17 AM PDT by tallhappy
This is a write up in the newest issue of the LA Weakly on the pro-W demontration freep that occurred in Santa Monica -- described and pictured in these two great threads: "Welcome Back, W!" HUNDREDS rally near Santa Monica airport to support President Bush – new PHOTOS! and FREEP REPORT: FReepers defend America's honor from leftist scum in Santa Monica
Some background for non-LA or CA freepers. LA Weakly is a leftist degenrate free weekly -- although it doesn't seem all that different than the LA Slimes. LA Weakly seems to be funded by a major moving picture industry less old than the one in Hollywood.
The article does not mention Free Republic, although in the past they often have. I'd say they learned they don't want to even mention the name Free Republic.
Of course the "zealots" of the title are meant to be us, not the commies.
Zealots on Parade
Bush backers stare down their nemesis in Santa Monica
by Howard Blume
Okay, so what if Los Angeles lacks the swing-voter clout of Davenport, Iowa? Last week, Southern California, too, got the same-day treatment from the candidates, which sparked a first-rate mano a mano between the faithful.
While John Kerry appeared unchallenged at Cal State Dominguez Hills, zealots faced off at the intersection of Ocean Park Boulevard and 31st Street in Santa Monica, just one block north of Santa Monica airport, where George W. Bush was appearing at a dinner that put a cool $3 million in his war chest.
And political artifice mirrored political reality: The outcome was too close to call, though it seemed more impressive somehow for more than 500 Bushies to turn out in this left-coast bastion, even if at least as many anti-Bushes had gathered, too.
Bush man Ron Smith had been preparing since early July, arriving at noon to stake out the intersection. “We had both corners,” said the white-haired Smith, who sells cars on the Internet. When the enemy arrived, “There was a confrontation. And I personally went over there and got all of our people off that side, because that was our deal with the police. They have one side; we have the other.”
Facing north, it was Bush people to the right, anti-Bushes to the left. The veritable standoff had Genevieve Peters beaming. The 41-year-old teacher and Beverly Hills resident founded L.A. for Bush. “It started out with eight people around a table, and it’s grown to hundreds — hundreds and hundreds,” said Peters. Democrats, she explained, “stand for hate and for vengeance and a globalization that has no strength or character or anything that’s for America. America, from the beginning of time, had an identity and culture. And they’re trying to decimate our identity and culture . . . to some melting pot like Europe.”
She added, “Democrats have gone in and said, ‘We’re just all one. Every culture has a place here.’ No! We’re an American culture.”
It was hard to hear over the amplified voice of a Bushie in a black hat. “On the other corner, I see dreadlocks and hippies,” he said mockingly, “and I see girlie men.” That started a chant of “girlie men, girlie men” from the street’s right wing. Next to Black Hat stood an elderly Vietnamese man dressed in green beret and camouflage. He held an American flag in his right hand, the yellow-and-red flag of South Vietnam in his left. A Bush-Cheney sign hung around his neck. He pumped his black-booted heel up and down in time to patriotic tunes and redneck rock blasting from a boom box. Nearby, a blind young man sang out, “You can’t take away my Bush.”
Black Hat wasn’t quite right about the dreads; his side included homeless activist Ted Hayes, whose dreads equal anyone’s. He had an amplified bullhorn in one hand and a genuine, polished ram’s horn in the other as he improvised chants. “Power to the right-wingers!” he shouted into the bullhorn, and, “We’re right and you’re wrong!”
From behind Hayes, Chuck Alio, of Long Beach, suddenly realized, “They don’t have one American flag over there.” Hayes had one around his neck and another made into the trousers he wore.
Alio added, “They say war is not the answer, but I ask them, ‘What is the answer? And what is the question?’”
On the left side, the message was mixed, and there was internal conflict, because anti-Bush didn’t necessarily mean pro-Kerry. “You guys are helping Bush,” shot one Kerry supporter at 28-year-old Karl, who was hawking papers for the International Socialist Organization.
Karl shouted right back, “We are helping build anti-imperialism in this country. Where does Kerry get all his money?” Karl was calm and polite moments later, when he likened the election to the movie Alien vs. Predator.
“There’s no question that the alien is Bush,” said Karl, who supports Ralph Nader. “Just a slobbering monster. But the predator, that’s Kerry. He’s a chameleon, who actually has a strategy and who’s able to fool people into thinking he’s something that he’s not. Whoever wins, we lose.”
As he spoke, chanters began with “Occupation is a crime . . . from Iraq to Palestine.” Passing out fliers was a woman in a long gingham skirt and a longer white slip underneath. She had the button “Smash the State” pinned to the black-net handbag that held her water bottle.
Blase Bonpane, a Green, said he wouldn’t go Nader this time. He takes the long view — really long when it comes to the Electoral College. “From day one, there was a disrespect for the people. The founders were afraid of what they called mob rule, and that has given us two very unfortunate presidents” — that is, presidents who gained office despite losing the popular vote.
So what was so bad about Rutherford B. Hayes?
After the Civil War, said Bonpane, “Hayes agreed in a smoke-filled room to take the Yankee troops out of the South. And that led to the Jim Crow years, almost like there hadn’t been a Civil War.”
George Bush, Bonpane added, is even worse.
Bonpane’s cool logic, however, was no match for the charisma of the Radical Teen Cheer kids, with their short skirts, tight pants and red tees with a black star:
“Hey, Bush! Who fights your wars? Just minorities and the poor.
“The CIA kills people, yeah, for corporations, yeah, they just want more.”
The hope on both sides was that the Bush motorcade would pass by.
It didn’t.
Which one Bush blond decided was just as well, even if this was a neighborhood of lattes and near-million-dollar homes. “It doesn’t look safe here for him,” she said, glancing nervously around her. “This neighborhood is not safe.”
This doesn't sound to me like FReepers, at all.
Ping
Pleasse, people. The only people who read the LA Weekly or OC Weekly are college students looking for "massages" or the local party scene. Politics run left of Marx in the Weekly.
Is the LA Weekly one of those free fliers that get piled up at grocery stores?
Good article.
Seconded. Do any Freepers remember talking to this guy?
Blaise Bon Pane??????? My Lord is he still alive?
Listen Bon Pane is a former 60's radical Marxist and SDS shill. I seem to remember that he is a defrocked priest who defected to Latin American revolutionaries and then fled to California. When I was running sources in the SDS in SoCal he popped up a lot in many of the debriefs. This is a guy who should be stuffed and mounted somewhere and used to scare children.
I don't have any of the files since the Feebs got very twitchy about our/my networks and had some of their people with bad breath and worse suits pick 'em all up. Note: the 115th MI Grp. had nothing to do with this operation.
I think this sounds like a fairly well-balanced article; nowhere in there does the writer try to make the Right look or sound like a bunch of kooks.
He's just reporting, which is all we should ask for.
Seems he's been resurrected as a watermelon man...
If you pause for a moment and try to evaluate or even understand what this writer is referring to by "Bonpane's cool logic," you will realize that this piece is neither cool nor logical, nor even coherent.
I remember talking to their reporter......and I remember introducing him to Genevieve.
Overall, it seems that his report was fairly accurate, considering his perspective. ;)Bottom line: OUR rally dominated his coverage, not the RAT's "anti-Bush" rally.
I consider THAT to be a success. :o)
This doesn't sound to me like FReepers, at all.There were about a DOZEN FReepers present, out of about FIVE HUNDRED pro-Bush "not-yet-FReepers."
(And about five hundred "bad guys.")Which part of this rally sounds "un-FReeper"-like?
See my previous post.
Good article.
That's what I was thinking, especially from the LA Weekly.
If taken from the idea that this was the Left mocking us, I can see your point.
But, were there actually any FReepers there acting like this?
What I am suggesting is that an article this biased and incoherent is not going to give an accurate picture of anything. So it could not possibly help make such an assessment except to suggest that it is more likely than not, given such biased incoherence, that none did.
What I am suggesting is that an article this biased and incoherent is not going to give an accurate picture of anything. So it could not possibly help make such an assessment except to suggest that it is more likely than not, given such biased incoherence, that none did.
Got it.
Twice. :]
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