Althouse: Rent a protester.

January 23, 2007

Rent a protester.

Pick a young and pretty one.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...: I love this. So very funny.; 1/23/07, 3:38 PM
Anonymous said...: Berlin is one of the very finest venues for a protest. I shall never forget my days there in the early 80's, even though, alas, we failed. Or did we?; 1/23/07, 3:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Does one laugh or cry? Probably both.

Kent State - Bloody Sunday - and now erento.com. Long, strange trip it has been indeed Garcia my old mucker.

Been done before of course. Who was the activist in the Seventies who succeeded in browbeating a particular corporation in submission, by threatening to buy up the first three rows of an opera the corp was sponsoring and packing them with volunteers who had all been fed two cans of baked beans an hour before curtain up?

I'd need to ask Melanie, Dilek et al. whether they'd go 'all the way' before I hired, but sadly my German may not be up to the task:

Wieviel für ein fart Liebling?; 1/23/07, 4:10 PM
Anonymous said...: Wow. Nice price. Palestinians only get $35 a day.

Trey; 1/23/07, 4:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Probably does work. I think the Cedar Revolution started the whole Protest Babe phenomenon. Nothing like a young, attractive female to get your cause on TV.

PETA learned that. Except they ruin it by always getting naked, which doesn't make the news.; 1/23/07, 4:40 PM
Bissage said...: Renting a crowd of protesters is exactly the best way for a shy fellow to get a date with that hot chick who lives in the building across the street.

“He, he. Ho, ho. Aus mit Niklas müssen Sie gehen!”; 1/23/07, 5:05 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: I walked a picket line in college when I was a Teamster for the afternoon paper. It was a charged & emotional time even for someone like me who was basically working summers and weekends. Then after college I took my place against a different group of Teamsters (Local 500) who were trying to get my union to walk out. I remember our group was outnumbered but could have beaten the crap of the Teamster group. Why, because The Teamster group consisted of a bunch of "de facto rent a protesters" i.e, union hall lackeys and assorted hanger-ons.

I guess someone saw a business opportunity in situations like that and so we have it.

These rent-a-protesters make a mockery of the concept to give up something (your job and paycheck) and taking a stand for something.; 1/23/07, 5:05 PM
vbspurs said...: Protesting has been a full-time job since at least the 1980s.

You used to see advertisements in Germany, pinned up in loo walls, saying that for transportation, and a meal, and a few DMs, they'd bus you around to rallies.

In the mid-90s, when I was at Oxford, we had professional recruiters for rallies, who targetted the sleazoids hanging around Deer Park, rather than the faux-intelligentsia (like me) knocking back the Courvoisiers at Freud Cafe.

Anyone who thinks protesters today, are not led by a very organised, very well-funded, very cynical group of people (like Code Pink), is still dreaming of sticking flowers into National Guardsmen's rifles.

Cheers,
Victoria; 1/23/07, 5:16 PM
vbspurs said...: BTW, can someone get on the horn and rent some protesters for these gals?

Coals to Newcastle, it ain't.

Breasts not Bombs

Cheers,
Victoria; 1/23/07, 5:19 PM
Revenant said...: This is fairly common, isn't it? I remember reading about people hired by labor unions to protest Walmart being paid less than the Walmart employees

Yeah, the protesters-for-hire thing is old hat. This is the first I've heard of someone setting up an agency, though -- usually the unions just grab some convenient "undocumented immigrants" and stick signs in their hands.

Anyway -- are they a union outfit? If not, could you hire them to protest against their own company?; 1/23/07, 5:22 PM
Bill said...: Are not people who sell their bodies for temporary use called street walkers or worse.; 1/23/07, 5:56 PM
Hunter McDaniel said...: Here's the real question - what makes it newsworthy just because a few hundred people congregate somewhere and carry signs around until the TV trucks leave?

Isn't the real problem an uncritical media who just use these folks as 'extras'?; 1/23/07, 7:17 PM
Revenant said...: Are not people who sell their bodies for temporary use called street walkers or worse

Er, they're generally called "blue collar workers", actually...; 1/23/07, 7:37 PM
Anonymous said...: You live blog Apprentice and the Golden Globes but not the State of the Union?

Weird.; 1/23/07, 8:14 PM
vbspurs said...: ADDED: "How'r'ya doin'" our President says, turning to Nancy Pelosi. He begins by taking credit for the new stop of saying "Madam Speaker."

Heh. Poor Ann. The new semester must have tired her.

Unless she's suggesting Nancy Pelosi was hired as a protester by that agency. :)

Cheers,
Victoria; 1/23/07, 11:17 PM