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Pen Points
Letters to Gay Today |
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2. The media has been totally neutralized. 3. Americans have a very short attention span and are incapable of analyzing complex issues rationally. Right now none of these situations exist in Europe, though there are disturbing signs that the "Southern Plague" (referring, of course, to the Dixie roots of modern American fascism) is catching on over there. Workers and students didn't turn out in their usual numbers in the recent French municipal elections, for example, and overall fewer people have been turning out to vote the past few years. Still, they have not reached the point of no return as I believe the U.S. has. The French, again, recently decreased the work week to 35 hours and are currently thinking about lowering the retirement age to 55 nationwide (it's 60 right now, and many cities already have the age set to 55). Retreat and fight another day I say. Most likely the Europeans will wake up to the Plague, and maybe they can even diffuse this situation over here peacefully -- IF they act quickly and aggressively. The split between the slave-holding states and the rest of the country is an obvious weak point to strike if they play their cards with the proper sophistication (they can always ask me -- I know exactly how to work this). Recently my roommate told me that Bush probably won't be re-elected. I told him it wouldn't surprise me one bit if we didn't have elections in 2004 to find out. Please tell me I'm wrong about all this. Bill Krapek Washington, D.C. Led the Way!
Frank Kameny Publicizing Bush's 'Best Performance in a Coup d'etat' My Oscar story begins about 4 months ago. My friend Bob called me up and asked me to volunteer to pick up a group of high school students from South Central LA, drive them to an Improv Comedy workshop in Venice, join with them in the workshop, and drive them home. The whole thing takes 5-6 hours every Thursday night. As the weeks rolled by, we became good friends and I became aware that teenagers are probably the least understood and most underused source of political activism in America. I began to cast about for ways to get them involved. I was websurfing, looking for sites to link to mine (impeachbushbumperstickers.com), when I came across oralmajorityonline.com and their idea to have a protest at every major American cultural event and every bush appearance until bush is hounded from office or impeached. The next protest on their list was the Oscars. I ran it by the kids about a month ago, and they loved it, although I don't think they really realized at the time how hard it is to go out into the street and protest. We planned a quick comedy improv skit centered on the supreme court bashing Gore on the head with a giant inflatable gavel, and anointing bush the king of America.
SO bright and early Sunday morning we left for South Central. It's always a chore, picking up all those kids, but the traffic gods favored us and we found ourselves at a $5 parking lot about 6 blocks from the Shrine Auditorium. It was a little after noon when I passed out the signs. Some of the kids were a little nervous at first but as we marched through the USC campus and over to the Shrine we got a few honks and some thumbs up from passing drivers so they loosened up. When we arrived at the www.oralmajorityonline.com protest area, it was apparent due to space limitations that there would be no opportunity to do our skit, so we abandoned that idea. Only one of the kids had ever been to a protest, so they were a little unsure about how to act. We got NO MORE BUSHIT stickers from Bob Kunst, who organized the protest (he snagged the prime real estate DIRECTLY across from the limo arrival area), and stuck them over our IMPEACH BUSH stickers on one side of our signs. I then led the kids in a spirited IMPEACH BUSH (turn all the signs over at the same time) NO MORE BUSHIT chant, and they really got the hang of it. As the afternoon rolled on, some of them were expecting a star or two to come over and greet us. None did. Later, on the way home, Kathy (not her real name) remarked that she was really happy we had gone because she hadn't realized how "stuck up" and "unfriendly" the stars really are. I'm a freelance TV producer, so I can guarantee that the people putting the Oscars on were completely aware of us, and in fact went through backflips to avoid getting us on camera. It must have made them very angry. A grip came over and reset a light in front of us to shine at the cameras and thus, partially obscure us with light. This just made us chant louder. At one point, about 500 or 600 people crowded up against the temporary fence between us and the USC campus. My wife and I were worried that they were going to break it down on top of us.all to catch a glimpse of a stupid celebrity. Fortunately the police came over and ran them off. Many times, I heard the crowd of "fans" (suckers in my opinion) in the bleachers go completely silent, and that's when I opened my lungs to full volume. Many of them would look over at us. I figured out I could bounce my voice off the front of the Shrine, right down into the "NO PUBLIC ACCESS" area (which incidentally was cordoned off on a public street and in a public elementary school playground). I guarantee everybody out there heard us, and this morning when I was watching CNN, most of the arrivals they taped were obscured by music. Believe me, they would rather use what they call a "sound up" and I also guarantee if they had used those "sound ups" that we would have been heard. Anyway it's a pain in the ass to use music in a news story, and if there was any way they could have avoided it, they would have. SO the afternoon rolled along, and one by one the kids got tired, and we finally had to leave around 4 o'clock. We found our way blocked by police tape to the east, who at first told us we would have to go back through the crowd (it would have been almost impossible, the way people were packed in there on a six foot sidewalk for an entire city block). I prevailed on the police to let us cut through onto the USC campus, and as we walked across the no-man's-land between the police tape, we were stopped and interviewed by an AP reporter. She asked me why we chose the Oscars, and I told her the old fable about how Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned. She laughed. I cannot find anything about us on the wire today though. We drove off and stopped for lunch, and discussed what had happened. We then drove them all home and finally got back home ourselves around 9, exhausted but overjoyed at the promise of the day. As I look back on it, it occurs to me that the benefit of our action is long term, beyond the protest itself. They may be in a class and get the opportunity to discuss their experience, or they may talk it over with their friends, or with their parents and relatives. I think it will be a powerful feeling for them. They know now that they are NOT helpless, that they CAN go out into the street and make their opinions known. They know now that they have the right to peaceably assemble, and to protest. They know now that the forces of corporate America strive to keep them down, and they are angry about it. They are empowered in many ways, on many different levels, and it gives me hope for the future.
Rusty Austin |
The Republicans: Finally doing something about overpopulation in the United States. They're driving some Americans out of the country 
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