I don’t watch a lot of protests on television, especially during football season (I find it more interesting to watch events where you don’t know what’s going to happen next). I do remember seeing several protests on television when I was younger, though: the ’68 Democratic National Convention, Kent State, the Selma marches. You know the images – tear-gas, guns, fire hoses, baton-wielding police in facemasks, police-dogs tearing at clothes.



In later years I also watched the the TV show Cops with all of its jerky camera foot-chases through dark alleys after wild-eyed, half-naked suspects desperate to get away and knee-in-the-back arrests with bleeped out language and pixilated faces.



When I heard about the anti-war protests over the weekend and that Cindy Sheehan and others had been arrested – and since George Bush is the new Bull Connor – you might understand why I imagined a desperate melee of hair-pulling blood and brutality, or at least a little bruising.



Ah, no.

(Photo via Reuters/Yahoo. Click to enlarge.)







Back in the day, you would have heard angry voices:



“@#%#% Pigs!”

“Hippie scum!”



Now it’s more like, “Good morning, I believe you had an appointment to be arrested?”



“Why yes, yes I did. I’m ready if you are, but be careful – my bursitis is acting up in this shoulder.”



I mean, there’s even a guy talking on his cell phone in the picture: “Hi, Muffy, it’s me. Everything’s right on schedule here, so I should be home by four. Hey, could you check and see whether or not I remembered to Tivo The West Wing before I left?”



I believe the group was chanting “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!” Assuming this were true (except for all the people in China, Iran and Darfur and other places who are dead or in jail for protesting against their government) then the whole world has got to be thinking, “What a country!”



Times have changed, I guess, as has the song the protestors sing:



“All we are saying, is put us on TV!”

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