I arrived in D.C. the night before the tea party protest of September 12, or the 9/12 Protest as it has come to be called. My goal was simple: make the most ironic signs possible, and, in the process, inspire a bit of doubt. If I could get just a few people to second-guess the demagogues on Fox News, I reasoned, I’d consider the whole trip a success.
I genuinely thought that my painfully sarcastic protest signs might change some minds, but as I later learned, the process is much more complicated.
What I didn’t realize is that it’s hard to maintain your own sense of humor when you’re surrounded by fanatics calling your president a traitor.
About two hours into the whole ordeal, I snapped. It happened while I watched a low-rank CNN correspondent attempt to interview one of the protesters. He was surrounded by about forty bystanders who were chanting, “tell the truth,” — many of them holding signs espousing the importance of the constitution. Shouting down a member of the press while waving a document that protects his right to speech was more than I could take. I began shouting, “Freedom of speech! Freedom of the press!” in sync with their chant. After about five of my shouts, the chants subsided. All of the protesters turned to me as my eyes met the reporter’s. I’ll never forget the look on the reporter’s face. Even now I’m not sure if it meant “you poor bastard” or “thank God!”
In one act of frustration, I set off a domino effect that ruined the rest of my day. Every single Joe Sixpack who secretly harbors a desire to be Glenn Beck wanted a shot at me. I could sense the thirst for blood, not only from them, but also in myself. I wanted to inflict harm.
Eventually I met a woman I appropriately deemed Lady Death. She was wearing a grim reaper costume while lecturing me on the nature of political ideologies. According to Lady Death, there are only three political factions in the entire world: anarchists, fascists, and moderates. As if this wasn’t amazing enough, she then informed me that I was a fascist who wanted to control women’s bodies. I sensed that this was some amorphous attack on my support of health care reform and the Democrat’s supposed love for abortion. This went on for quite some time, and I think I bit off more than I could chew. I was living in a liberal’s apocalypse and the horde was slowly closing in.
Fearing what might happen, I pointed in a random direction and yelled “Nancy Pelosi!” Some of them were momentarily distracted, but I only escaped for good once America The Beautiful started playing over the loudspeakers, and everyone stopped to sing along — it turns out that no matter how patriotic you think you are, no one remembers the words past the third verse.
On my return flight from D.C. I played back all the videos I had captured and realized that I had become a mirror image of everything I dislike about the tea party protests. I had failed in my goal. Not one of the people I spoke to walked away the least bit unsure of their convictions. Instead, they walked away further convinced that liberals were rude and arrogant. I had only succeeded in furthering the divide.
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