June 18, 2011

The Silent Majority Walk and the Naked Bike Ride.

Today at the Capitol Square. Video shot and edited by me. Small glimpses of genitalia from 6:03 to 6:30. Breast alert.

The event I came to see was the Silent Majority Walk, an event planned to show appreciation for Scott Walker and the Republican legislature that passed the Budget Repair Bill this week.



0:00 — The pro-Walker walkers congregate a block away from the square and receive instructions to walk completely silently, confident in the rightness of their position, without response to "any of the mud that going to be slung at us today."

0:28 — The group walks by a sidewalk cafĂ© (Graze) and an old man on a bench who says "Boo from me. Boo from me. You get a boo from me. You get a boo from me. Hold that flag up straight."

0:57 — More walking, past various street musicians and people enjoying the lovely day. Zero heckling.

2:40 — A young man — wearing capris over leggings — registers some objections.

3:02 — An older couple on bikes call out, naming some accomplishments of the labor movement —"Let's hear it for minimum wage" — then switch to a fairly polite "shame, shame, shame." The woman smiles. I suggest they catch up with the group since they are on bikes. The man says, "No, we're not going to harass them any more." I say, "People haven't really been heckling them at all. I'm surprised how civil people are being." The man says, "For some reason, we just got turned on." I laugh and say, "You're the only ones."

4:28 — A bagpiper gives them the thumbs down.

4:38 — "That's brand new. I'm shocked as shit," says a black man, laughing. I ask him some questions about why he's shocked and try to find out if he might perhaps actually be a Walker supporter himself.

5:54 — We hear a hubbub and I realize "These are the naked bike riders!" They ride by chanting "Less gas, more ass." I continue my discussion with the shocked-as-shit guy, who declares "That's America! That's America! That's the freedom!"

7:48 — An old guy in a protest contraption with pinwheels and palm trees.

8:04 — I talk to a young man who is tending a table marked "Madison Objectivists." "Is there much interest in Ayn Rand here?" I ask.

65 comments:

The Drill SGT said...

Althouse gets excited at naked people...

Meade, you need to provide more ass and less gas...

Jose_K said...

As usual old men and a couple of middle age women
Ugly people doit for free. Beautiful women are paid to be naked and wont give it for free

Sofa King said...

I love the reaction: "Oh no! No! Oh, no!!"

WV: gropinas

No comment.

Anonymous said...

Geez - I wish the silent majority would have been more vocal. We would have driven down. That's always the problem with us conservatives when it comes to activism - zero organizational skills.

edutcher said...

Note the range in ages among the Walkers, mostly young and good looking, unlike the Lefty propaganda about the Tea Party demographic. And only one Woman From Walmart and she was willing to walk. The Tea Party demographic seems to fit the union slugs more.

The black guy was good. He got the idea, which was more than the Lefties ever will.

"These are the naked people! These are the naked people!", Ann exclaims and almost drops the camera.

Gee, Ann, why do I think you wanted to be an embedded reporter?

Or is it just the creamy hippie love chick center coming through again?

PS Love the old geezer with the sign, "Class Warfare! Which Side Are You On?".

My first thought was, the side of class.

Anonymous said...

Blogger Pro Tip: No more weiner, more boobs = HITS!

rhhardin said...

Bike commute today past young cornlettes.

The corn is not going to be elephant's eye by the fourth of July this year.

Irene said...

"Do you think there is something 'White' about an event like that?"

LOL!!

The laughter on this video
was infectious. Everyone here is laughing now.

Joanna said...

I wish the silent majority would have been more vocal. We would have driven down.
Ditto.

Carol_Herman said...

Best lesson you can teach your children is NOT to react to belligerence.

It takes energy to be belligerent. In time they'll exhaust themselves.

As to the naked bikers, there were more of them. Which is kind'a strange. Because really there are more of the silent Americans than just about any other group.

Also proves if you want to run through the streets naked as a jay bird, make sure you find a whole bunch of others dropping their pants.

If you tried this by yourself, you'd be arrested.

Oh, yeah. Those people on bikes have to trust a lot of others! There's no place in that parade for a U-Bolt. If someone comes along and steals one of the bikes ... do the other riders give chase?

Madison, Wisconsin.

You know what I didn't see? The Tents. Did they all get sold on eBay? Where'd the tents go?

Oh, yeah. What was the destination of the bike riders? Did they stop at a bar? Or a Starbucks?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Here's a much better bike ride...

No offence to Madisonians.

rhhardin said...

Whatever happend to plain old streaking?

The nice thing about streaking is that as they go away they seem to be smiling.

Bike riding ruins that effect.

galdosiana said...

I have a serious question, though: isn't this illegal? If so, why no arrests? (Or shouldn't I bother to ask?)

edutcher said...

galdosiana said...

I have a serious question, though: isn't this illegal? If so, why no arrests? (Or shouldn't I bother to ask?)

These are Lefties doing this in a Lefty city. And it probably is illegal - for you and me. Of course, they get away with it

If it were the Walkers, they would all be in jail for the weekend.

PS The Blonde would not be impressed. For her, the Naked Bike Riders would just be like another night at work.

Alex said...

An older couple on bikes call out, naming some accomplishments of the labor movement —"Let's hear it for minimum wage"

When will libs understand that you can't artificially raise the floor for low-skill labor and not have consequences? Which blue state with a super high min wage has low unemployment at the lower-class level?

Anonymous said...

It figures that the Naked Bike Ride would be your basic fiesta de chorizo.

Peter

Chip S. said...

Small glimpses of genitalia is right up there with Eats shoots and leaves for teaching English syntax.

Shouting Thomas said...

Is there a single resident of Madison who doesn't have a Plan to Save the World?

Toad Trend said...

Men riding bikes naked?

So wrong, on so many levels. Embarrassing...look like they belong on a National Geographic special being led by a shaman.

No self-respecting man would EVER ride a bike, naked.

Ridiculous.

Penny said...

"The corn is not going to be elephant's eye by the fourth of July this year."

Why rh? I thought you knew.

It's never about the size of the stalk, assuming your corn is sweet.

Brian Brown said...

"Let's hear it for minimum wage"

Really?

Considering minimum wage costs people jobs, lets not.

Palladian said...

Oh dear God, I hope none of the bikes in the "Naked Bike Ride" were the City of Madison rental bikes...

Palladian said...

Think about it! Bike seats? Naked?

And is biking naked really a good idea from a safety standpoint? Distracting drivers? And think of the brush-burn potential of a crash....

Chip S. said...

Always recycle when you cycle on communal property.

rhhardin said...

Elephant's eye is Oklahoma, actually; not Ohio.

But I've seen it elephant's eye high on the 4th of July. Last year, for instance.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Lets hear it for.. Jonas Salk.

Shame shame shame.

JorgXMcKie said...

I wonder if the woman shouting about "the Minimum wage" wants to work for it? If public workers were willing to work for the minimum wage the public budget problems would disappear.

;->=

Quaestor said...

A naked bike ride, how sad... flab and sag on wheels in public. What's even more poignant, nay tragic is that these are all certified adults with all the rights and duties pertaining unto, and yet they evidently believe cycling on the public streets can achieve anything worth achieving.

I had my eye peeled for the nude women, but noted only one, and that one was tattooed to a degree reserved for circus freaks. I also took notice of the generous proportion of helmeted noggins -- not much nudity from the neck up, as if there was anything valuable at risk.

All in all a fitting group of spokesmen for the green manifesto.

The Crack Emcee said...

Naked bike ride? Make sure everybody sees it.

The naked truth? Avoid at all cost.

It's just who they are - and it ain't pretty.

Penny said...

Rh, you got a sweet little girl there. Not to mention brave.

Lot's of dogs are trained. But how many can hold off a herd of elephants wearing corn stalks? And across state lines!

Big Mike said...

Some of those people look awfully flabby to be regular bike riders. There was an awful lot of very flabby ass on display.

Jum said...

Is there any way for a middle-aged guy who has perfected the Pillsbury Doughboy look to appear more ridiculous or less cool than to stroll naked in public? Well, I mean other than to buckle on a safety helmet and join a nude bicycling protest down Main Street while raw-straddling a neoprene-covered racing-bike seat.

Now, tell the truth - how many of you folks involuntarily cringed just a little when you read the bit about straddling the bike seat?

Luther said...

"No self-respecting man would EVER ride a bike, naked."

Nah, that's nothing compared to wearing shorts.

Naked brings delightful lilt, honest amusement, respect, even.

Shorts, well... humiliation and derision.

Lyle said...

It's hard to believe that guy was in the state pen. Seemed like a guy with his act together. Good for him.

Maybe he was screwed by the state though.

Curious George said...

"My first thought was, the side of class."

Ha. Me too.

Michael Haz said...

The weather today was perfect, so I hopped on my motorcycle and rode to Madison in hopes of seeing (1)battling protestors, and (2)naked coeds on bicycles. Zero for two.

Several laps around the square presented nothing but bread, produce, jams, honey, cheese, frozen meat and some street food. No pepper spray, no tear gas, no paddy wagons, no police wearing helmets and brandishing shields against naked rock-throwing bicyclists.

May I say, you people have disappointed me. We actual late 60s - early 70s UW protestors were, frankly, much better than this sorry lot. You looked like the Madison Lions Club today.

Bicycles? Seriously?? How can you be a 'naked bicyclist' if you are wearing a dopey helmet? Where's the risk in that? Make you point by riding naked - really naked, no shorts or flesh colored bras - in January. That'll make a point. A shriveled point, but a point nonetheless.

I stopped at Marahini for lunch expecting that a restaurant where 90% of the guests weren't speaking English would be a politics-free environment, at least as far as my non-Hindi ears would know. I wasn't disappointed. The food was excellent; the patio was quiet.

The protests are over, for the most part. Scott Walker got maybe 95% of what he wanted. The hired protestors have gone elsewhere; the usual collection of Madison characters and dead-enders remain.

The recalls of Republican legislators aren't going to be successful. Television ads replaying clips of the protests will move voters away from the Democrats, especially ads with those protestors who happily announced their Socialist and Communist beliefs.

Russ Feingold, aka The Guy Who Lost To A Rookie, won't win if he runs against Scott Walker in a recall election. Won't happen. The voters will have, by the time of that election, fully recognized the fiscal good done by Walker's budget.

Madison met reality and reality won.

The ride home through Sun Prairie, Columbus, Watertown and the Wisconsin countryside was just lovely. And the corn is short for this time of the year.

mike said...

Those bicycle seats must have been pretty nasty by the end of that ride. Seriously. Slidin' up between some hippy's bare but cheeks and a naked woman's how-ya-doin. Gross.

The Crack Emcee said...

"Do you think there is something 'White' about an event like that?"

You guys will catch on eventually:

Science fiction, jokes and forbidden love: The book market in Nazi Germany was surprisingly varied. But perhaps the most bizarre bestseller to make it past the censors was an unabashed collection of nudist photography. It was a celebration of the Aryan body.

What did Germans read during the Nazi era? In search of the answer, author Christian Adam surveyed a total of 350 bestsellers from the 12 years of the Third Reich's existence -- making striking discoveries in the process. In addition to well-known propaganda books like Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and Alfred Rosenberg's "The Myth of the Twentieth Century," there were schmaltzy regional novels, science fiction, mysteries, love stories, joke books and cross-media marketed accompaniments to radio programs and films.

The rich variety of reading material likely arose because different censorship offices competed to have the last word on what books publishers could print, Christian says. The paradoxical effect is that some of the books printed seem surprising today. Perhaps the oddest of them all was Hans Surén's "Mensch und Sonne," or "Humans and Sun," a collection of nude photographs that includes lyrical praise of the male member, instructions for yoga-like exercises and even naked skiing.

It could be seen as a precursor to the sexual revolution and "Freikörperkultur (FKK)," or "free body culture" of the late 1960s, if it weren't so blatantly racist, researcher Adam told SPEIGEL ONLINE in an interview.

The Crack Emcee said...

Madison met reality and reality won.

There Is No Reality (Since The Cultists Told Me So,...)

William said...

By and large the people in Madison seem pleasant and good natured. The hecklers are not exactly spittle flecked with hatred. The naked bikers don't seem anywhere near as in your face flashy as Weiner. Even the black guy with a big pen history seems laid back and amused by the passing scene. There are so many ways to enjoy a fine, June day.

The Crack Emcee said...

"I have a serious question, though: isn't this illegal? If so, why no arrests? (Or shouldn't I bother to ask?)

These are Lefties doing this in a Lefty city. And it probably is illegal - for you and me. Of course, they get away with it

If it were the Walkers, they would all be in jail for the weekend."

"At first nudists were suspicious to the regime, though not because of the free body cult. Instead it was because the practice wasn't official. There was not a prudish or anti-pleasure atmosphere, though permissiveness was always coupled with thoughts on race. But due to their willingness to be co-opted by the party, nudists achieved official state recognition fairly quickly."

Sofa King said...

These are Lefties doing this in a Lefty city. And it probably is illegal - for you and me.



I believe that technically, so long as the exposure is strictly non-sexual, there is no law against nudity in Madison.

Personally I thought it was funny.

M. Simon said...

I really liked the woman moaning Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! as the naked bike riders road by.

M. Simon said...

Road bye or rode by. I'm trying to decide.

edutcher said...

M. Simon said...

I really liked the woman moaning Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! Oh No! as the naked bike riders road by.

"Moaning"?

(a little too much porn in some lives?)

I think Ann wished she'd been more ready and gotten a better shot.

Or something.

"The woman"?

Well, she is that. And a bag of chips.

Anonymous said...

"These are Lefties doing this in a Lefty city. And it probably is illegal - for you and me. Of course, they get away with it ..."

This is an important feature of our system of government; that enforcement of our laws is always optional.

Cops are not required to arrest you when they encounter you even if you have technically broken some law. (And I've appreciated this feature on several occasions.)

There are so many laws, you are probably violating one right this very second that you could theoretically be arrested for (you might not be convicted, but you could be arrested).

Even if the police do arrest you, that doesn't mean a prosecutor is required to bring you to trial.

The law is really a set of guidelines that can always be deviated from by the judicial branch of government when it decides to not enforce the law.

It's why Tim Geithner is still a free man. He could easily have been arrested for his felony tax evasion, but he wasn't.

Citizens, of course, can overcome that flaw in our system. Did you know that it is legal for regular old citizens to form a grand jury and indict someone? And also arrest them and hold them over for trial?

The legal system doesn't want us to know that it is perfectly legal to take enforcement of the law into our own hands should we deem that necessary.

Clyde said...

It's amazing how, in so many cases, clothing adds aesthetic value.

Writ Small said...

All those men in shorts in the first half of the video and not a single comment.

Toad Trend said...

@Luther

(Okay, I'm thinking the Ghost and Mr. Chicken...)

"Naked brings delightful lilt, honest amusement, respect, even.

Shorts, well... humiliation and derision."

Clyde said...

...and I yelled,
"Don't look, Ethel!"
But it was too late.
She'd already got a free shot...

Anonymous said...

The, uhm, uh, "Fit" of the naked ass and bicycle seat has always seemed problematic to me....

Anonymous said...

accomplishments of the labor movement —"Let's hear it for minimum wage"

I didn't think minimum wage was a public-sector union accomplishment. This is like the oft-unnoted difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration. If you just call it "immigration" and say that people are against it, you are leaving out important information.

I don't think the public sector unions get to claim the accomplishments of the private sector unions made of people who did really hard, dangerous work, like mining.

Phil 314 said...

I'm glad I don't live in Madison

Known Unknown said...

Glad recumbent bike guy was wearing shorts.

That's all.

deborah said...

It was definitely a missed opportunity, EM.

Great report, MH.

Carol_Herman said...

Quoting Andrew Breitbart. The enemy is the RIGGED media!

The rigged media said Breitbart "edited" the Shirley Sherrod tapes. As if the Pigford stuff was a walk in the park. And, is still funded.

On the other hand? When weiner's weener was exposed, weinder turned on Breitbart and claimed he was hacked.

How long did the "hacking charge" last?

Finally, after 3 weeks, the media caught on that weiner's underpants (and other shots), were going VIRAL.

Viral is something that scares the pants off of all the corproate execs, who earn big bucks, over in media land.

While, if you'll notice, Katie Couric bit the dust.

The real fight is to expose the RIGGING.

And, to add an insult to the left in pointing out to them how SHALLOW they are.

Breitbart spelled out the ways. He said when he was liberal, he slept till 3PM. And, didn't have to do anything in his life, except spout, his religious adherence to the left's "positive values." Which he said were all SHALLOW.

Shallow people don't drown in the pool. But they have no fun at all being in the water, because they can't swim.

When you come here you are coming to a place the Internet provides. That's the joy of it. At first, the media bypassed fly-over country.

But what you discover, even if you've lived on the coast all of your life ... is that people in middle America are NICE!

As to the naked bike riders. Gee, I hope those weren't rented bikes. And, how did they get to their march? Did they leave their homes, naked? Where did they shed their clothes? This, alone, must have been a sight.

I wonder if they wandered in naked, to the area's local Starbucks, and ordered a latte? How did they carry their money in? In their teeth? Where did they put their change?

And, while you noticed helmets, I noticed sox. Both put the real ugly on nudity, don't they?

Wasn't the "wearing sox" part the image that defeated Eliot Spitzer, too?

rhhardin said...

Nudity on its own is at best unremarkable, and under the slightest provocation goes to the ridiculous.

Being good looking has nothing to do with it and won't help you.

Women are watching for nice eyes, and men for signs of sexual receptivity, to get the popular expectation from nudity. Which again doesn't depend much on good looks.

rhhardin said...

Bicycle seats:

You're ideally perched on your two sit bones, not on soft tissues. Otherwise a bike seat is no good for distance. A bike seat is made fairly hard to allow this.

So bare butts won't matter.

The sit bones are further apart in females, and they have wider bike seats if they've bought correctly.

deborah said...

When I saw the way the naked genitalia rested on the bike seat, I got how those indentations on a bike seat for males works.

rhhardin said...

The male bike seat indentations are for some nerve or other pretty far back and prostates, not for anything visible genitaliawise.

Though Paul Harvey used to joke that if the world made any sense, it's men that would ride side-saddle, which plays on that misconception.

Hoosier Daddy said...

Madison needs to check out Jenny Craig.

deborah said...

Gotcha, thanks.

The Scythian said...

Crack,

Preach it! The shared origins of Naziism and the hippie movement in late-19th century German romanticism need to be hammered again and again.

Banshee said...

Why didn't they arrest the people running around naked in public?

And isn't public exposure a sex offense? Why would any public employee want to be convicted and tracked as a sex offender?

Sigivald said...

"Let's hear it for the minimum wage"?

Let's hear it for making unskilled labor un-hireable, and ... what have you done for us lately?

If the last thing "unions" did that wasn't worthless was in 1938, they're rather past their prime, aren't they?