This Saturday, September 24, there will be a massive march on Washington to bring the troops home now from Iraq. Cindy Sheehan will headline the event. Given Bush's all-time-low approval ratings and the public disapproval of the war, this may well be the biggest anti-war demonstration since Vietnam.
I wish I could be there to be part of this historic march. However, duty calls here at home. Go if you can. Details here.
That said, I was a bit taken aback by a comment posted to some e-mail discussion group earlier this week. The writer pointed out that Hurricane Rita would probably interfere with the rally's media coverage, delegating the peaceniks to page 2, while Rita gets page 1 in all of the Sunday papers.
I see two things wrong with this person's attitude:
1. Most mainstream media are not likely to lead with a peace rally story in the first place, hurricane or not. I'm not defending the media, just stating the obvious. They're starting to wake up and smell the corruption in the White House, but there are rallies almost every day in Washington, DC. It's not what most mainstream media would consider a leading story.
2. This isn't a competition. We cannot compete with Mother Nature. And would you really want a newspaper's readers to learn about a march of healthy activists before hearing of thousands of hurricane victims whose lives have just been devastated to a degree that you probably couldn't begin to imagine? Have a heart! (And aren't you the same people who criticized the Bush administration for brushing off the last big hurricane?)
Please don't undermine the anti-war movement by resorting to Bush-like tactics of seeking out your own photo ops at the expense of hapless victims.
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