Irony not dead!
MTV has an article about the protest in NYC today which has an odd take on things: the headline is "Peaceful Protest by 200,000 in New York Marred at End." Apparently the "marring" of the peaceful protest involved "hundreds of protesters refus[ing] to leave the park" at the end of the protest. There's a mention of "11 cops [being] sprayed with mace," which I guess is a marring of a peaceful protest, but the article doesn't really describe what the marring was very clearly.
At any rate, that's not the ironic part. The ironic part comes when you click the "Click for photos from the protest" link, and you page through the first 10 of the 14 available photos, and you click the Next button, and then you get to the animated US Air Force ad. "We've been waiting for you; Cross into the blue." I gotta wonder if this was an intentional ad placement or just random. (And later when I reloaded the main article page, a join-the-Army ad was in the right-hand column!)
I think the thing that bugs me the most about what people on all sides are saying is the oversimplification that goes on. Okay, it's a sound-bite war—"shock and awe" and all that. But even so, chanting "Bush and Hitler, just the same" isn't gonna change anyone's mind. And on the other side, this (from the MTV article) seems fairly typical of the reactions I've been seeing online to anti-war demonstrations:
"I understand there will be anti-war rallies," said 29-year-old Danny Tyminsky, who carried a pro-Bush sign. "You gotta have them. But they should happen before the war. Now that we're at war, people need to rally behind our troops and not forget what happened at the [World] Trade Center [on September 11]."
Besides the silliness of the notion that once the country is at war you're required to stop voicing opposition, I continue to be confused by the non-sequitur connection to 9/11. Is Tyminsky here saying that the WTC attack happened because of anti-war protesters? Is he saying that anti-war protesters will cause another terrorist attack? I'm just not getting it.
But despite my opposition to sound bites (down with sound bites!), I have to admit that I'm tickled by the "Look, Daddy, I made a war!" sign one of the protesters was carrying.