It was a quirk of fate. I was returning to the anti-war/anti-Bush/
anti-John Doolittle pro-peace rally from an up-scale Raley's market
in El Dorado Hills CA, a market where seemingly desperate housewives
shop in stiletto high heels and sprayed-on factory-faded jeans. I was
a few moments late -- the police barricaded the main street where
Bush's armored black car would pass after his helicopter arrival and
the cops directed me instead to a more neutral parking area ("we
won't be giving tickets today" an officer said) where the Bush-
friendly automatons lined the nicely appointed and primly maintained
divided roadway, a roadway that was itself declared off-limits even
to pedestrian traffic just as I traversed it.The police would not let me join my cohorts, protesters, at the intersection. I could, however, go in the opposite direction if I wished. That's where the local supporters were...families with children, school kids and their teachers, aging rich Republicans. Folks with polyester and American dreams in their cathode-ray burned eyes. I stood slightly apart from the large group in front of the elementary school. There was one lonely newsman standing next to me. After the four horribly thumping military choppers flew overhead -- one with the President aboard, we don't get to know which 'cause someone may want him dead -- a flurry of police motorcycles and every overtime sucking sheriff car comes screaming by, followed eventually by His Royal Highness', er, The President's black enameled armored car. The gaggle of Bush enthusiasts waved excitedly as His Royal W smirked through the inch-thick smoked glass window. I held aloft the middle finger of my right hand. It felt good. When the wargasm had passed, the newsman asked me, "How did that feel seeing the Devil behind the window like that?" I asked him, "Will you print my answer?" He laughed. That's the modus operandi of the front line journalist -- the "yeah, right!" of journalism's defense mechanism for being fuck-ups. Since I had my banjo-ukulele with me, I turned to the loyal favorites and began playing as briskly as I could Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever". The television slurping gang, unused to live music, was enthralled. I drew them unto me. Smiling into their smiling, ecstatic faces, flourishing with panache one of my more energetic show-off numbers. I had them in the palm of my hand, smiling faces, all. Then I stopped. "Oh it's a good thing," I intoned with my loudest, most arrogant voice, "that this is America. If this were Iraq, all those children would be dead now," waving my hand to the fresh young faces who had just been enthralled by the President's presence. The teachers gathered round the children and quickly herded them back into the safety of the homeland security of the classroom, me shouting "What will you tell them of the Magna Carta? Will you tear the pages from their textbooks? How will you explain it?" An older woman, an elder of the gaggle, said I was sick. I advised her to turn off her television, that her information was bad. She stormed off and her place was taken by a young woman who told me her brother was in Iraq in the army at this very moment. I told her she above all should be against this war and that she should go on the internet and look up Delayed Stress Syndrome, that some psychiatrists are saying that no American soldier can avoid it, that she learn what she can do to help her brother when he returns. She stormed off. I replayed Stars and Stripes Forever as I walked away. Dan Scanlan
