the metafictional blues

I joined the organized march to protest the RNC in New York yesterday. It was a very nice August day in Manhattan, a bit hot but not so hot as to make people cranky, even the “Billionaires for Bush” gang who showed up in tuxedos and evening gowns to play-act clueless rich people chanting “Four More Wars!” among other things. As this group proved, protest marches in NY City tend to be more about satire than anger.

The agenda was fairly serious, but the overall mood of the crowd was somewhere between that of a Phish parking lot scene and the annual Greenwich Village halloween parade. There were a lot of costumes and a lot of “concept protesters” in groups. One gang carried large white cardboard doves on sticks which was a nice effect from a distance. Another gang of women dressed in pink t-shirts and tried to get everybody to do the macarena as they marched. There were lots of signs and slogan t-shirts and banners, and I guess my favorite one was “Hey, Osama’s not in Iraq — OOPS!”.

There was much more anti-Bush than pro-Kerry, which worries me just a little. The positive mood of the crowd was encouraging, though. The cops were out in large numbers, and I’m really not sure why it was necessary for them to carry machine guns or assault rifles or whatever you call them, but we’ve been seeing that on NY streets for a couple of years now and nobody seemed to feel threatened. At the end of the day I heard one protester thank the cops for doing a good job, and I couldn’t argue with his assessments.

I spent the day in two places, first outside Madison Square Garden and then up in Central Park. One of the highlights for me was stopping for a half hour to sing along with the Guitar Man from Central Park, who was doing his standard Sunday show (this is one of the best things to do in NY City on a summer Sunday, if you’ve never seen the Guitar Man) with an extra “Bush Go Home” focus.

It wasn’t till I read about it in the Times this morning that I heard the estimate of half a million protesters. It didn’t look anywhere near that big to me, but I guess it’s hard to tell how big a crowd you’re in when you’re in it.

Oh yeah — Grandpa from the Munsters (Al Lewis) was there with the Billionaires for Bush! I heard that Michael Moore and Jesse Jackson and others were there, but I missed the speeches segment and saw no evidence of this. But Grandpa from the Munsters was definitely there, and you are probably not going to hear this newsworthy fact anywhere else except for right here.