"Read the truth," A tall ruffian dressed like one of the Sex Pistols encouraged me in a gruff voice as he thrust a folded pamphlet into my hands. I barely managed a mild, "Oh, um�thanks?" before he was totally out of earshot. I looked down, and the printout stapled to the jacket of the pamphlet certainly promised that what I was about to read was indeed �The Truth�. I opened the pamphlet and nearly had a coronary when I saw it was from the Irish Republican Army.
Leaving aside the fact that I had no idea there even was a North American Chapter of the IRA (and also leaving aside the fact that I will never look at an Irish Car Bomb quite the same way again), what the hell demographic do I fit that the Irish Republican Army thought I might be sympathetic to their cause?
Allow me to backtrack just a trifle. On Saturday, May Day and I headed eastward into Hollywood to attend what was proposed to be one of many sprawling peace rallies being held around the globe. I won�t go into too much detail, as one of my New Year�s resolutions was to talk about politics less, but that�s what we were doing. Unfortunately, this particular protest suffered greatly from what I like to call "Donna Martin Graduates" Syndrome. Allow me to explain.
If you have not seen the seminal episode of Beverly Hills 90210 where the School Board prohibits one Miss Donna Martin from graduating after she is caught drunk on Prom night, then first of all, I both pity and fear you. It is brilliant. Donna�s friends, of course, simply cannot stand by and watch the sweet, innocent Tori Spelling be persecuted as a figurehead for all the evils that high school students do, and they whip the entire senior class into a frenzy over the injustice of it all. I mean, they evidently manage to convince every senior at West Beverly High to stage a walkout over this.
Now, I�m not trying to be a Doubting Thomas, or anything, but I�m highly skeptical that any more than about 15% of those kids actually gave a rat�s ass about Donna or her pursuit of higher education. Probably half of them were marching just because it was a chance to get out of school in the middle of the day, and what, are they going to assign detention to every single senior? In any case, managing to get all the seniors to care about Donna isn�t enough for Brandon, Kelly, et al. They need more support, and so they turn to the sophomores.
I�m not sure who acted as representative for the entire sophomore class, but there�s this scene where they report that all the sophomores will join in the protest, provided that Donna�s friends make it a secondary goal of the rally to take a stand against the dress code, proposed to take effect in the next few years. So then they get all the sophomores to join in, and the numbers keep growing and growing, presumably through similar compromises, until the entire student body of West Beverly High marches on City Hall, chanting, "Donna Martin graduates! Donna Martin graduates!"
And here�s what I�m saying: probably only about 5% of those protesters actually even knew who the fuck this �Donna Martin� person was, let alone cared whether she graduated or not. We know a fairly sizeable chunk was there only because of the dress code thing, anyway, and who knows what other issues Brandon promised the student body would be addressed in order to get more people involved? My friend Emily and I had this ongoing joke about what that protest must have been like:
DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES! DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES! (No dress code!) DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES! (Tater tots in the cafeteria!) DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES! (Please clean the bathrooms!) DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES!
And that�s what this peace rally was like. Only about 15% of the people there actually seemed to have peace as their primary issue. I mean, you couldn�t turn around without stepping on a Socialist who wanted you to join them, and everyone was trying to sell signs, buttons, t-shirts, banners, flags, you name it, like is this a protest or a flea market? Get away from me with that. I mean, I�m all for freedom of expression, but this rally wasn�t supposed to be about Socialism or Anarchy, or the Israel-Palestine conflict, it was supposed to be about Donna fucking Martin, so shut up, get those two fingers in the air, and get ready to march!
Someone Got Here By Searching For: what girl do bag coke And: "Jessica Simpson, video" I�m Watching: Arrested Development some more. And: Home Movies, which still cracks me up.