Saturday, September 12, for those of you who don’t know, was Glenn Beck’s “Day After 9/11 Grass Roots Rally of Millions”. Raging against the Obama administration on his dysfuntional television program, Beck had challenged the current president on everything from healthcare to government run concentration camps for citizens. “Just how stupid do you think we are, Mr. President?” had become the rallying cry at the end of the program each evening, as he urged supporters to show up in overwhelming numbers for his march on Washington, DC.
A week before the event it was pointed out that the catch phrase was too long to fit conveniently on a bumper sticker and it was shortened to “How Stupid?” But when polling among Beck’s supporters indicated that the abbreviated phrase was more than most of the target audience could remember, the phrase was cut back further ending up as, “Stupid?” Punctuation not being a strong suit for those actually showing up on the 12th, most of the hand lettered signs simply bore the message, “Stupid!”
Herded onto buses for the trek to the capital, Beck’s supporters, upon seeing the Washington Monument for the first time, spontaneously broke into their trademark song, “Take This Job and Shove it into a Cargo Container Bound for China.” By noon the Lincoln Memorial was crammed with hundreds of protestors chanting, “how stupid are we, how stupid are we,” and chowing down on deep fried lard bars provided by Freedom Works, a non-profit entity funded by Phillip Morris and health insurance giant, Metlife. At noon the crowd began chanting, “speech, speech, speech,” until it became obvious that no one was slated to speak and worse, no one knew what they were supposed to be protesting against. One attendee shouted out, “I want my country back,” but by then the enthusiasm of the mob had cooled as had the lard bars. An hour later a federal park ranger cleared the memorial so that a work crew could begin its scheduled clean up of pigeon droppings and the rally stuttered to a close. Most of the pent up anger against the government was redirected when it was discovered that the tour buses had pulled out before noon, leaving hundreds of disgruntled citizens muttering about the incompetence of Obama’s federal bus system.
Teabaggers Blow off Steam
