Palin in Flushing

Well, as expected, Sarah Palin ventured into East Ohio yesterday for a "victory rally" near St. Clairsville (Flushing to be precise). As many of you know, my plan was to sabotage the event. So I came up with an unusual idea. I constructed a large sign that said...

DINOSUARS
ARE ONLY
4,000
YEARS OLD

Just for the record, Dinosaurs was intentionally misspelled. I even thought about adding an apostrophe or two w/ the word "DINOSUARS" and/or "YEARS" but thought that might be a bit excessive. Anyway, the sign itself was bad ass. Flourescent poster board w/ black vinyl lettering. It really looked strong. My gameplan was to bring it into the event so when the cameras panned the crowd, it would have a bold presence. I even snagged a bunch of Ohio Valley welcomes SARAH signs just to cover it up. Turns out none of this would be warranted. The Palin people decided that NO SIGNS would be permitted in the rally. What a fucking bummer! Very deflating. Of course, when you entered, they would end up giving you a sign that reads "COUNTRY FIRST" along with some red, white and blue pom poms. But that's another story. So much for freedom of speech - as long as it's homogenous, uniform speech, I guess it's acceptable.
Why did I want to do this? I've discovered that if you make a mockery of someone, it tends to be an excellent way to discredit them. I figured that if an undecided voter were to see one of those whackjob, religious freakazoid signs at the rally it would make them think twice about casting a vote for McCain/Palin. My theory - "Jesus Christ, do I really want to align myself with the weirdos who support this women?" Usually people don't want to vote for someone who has been successfully mocked and ridiculed because it makes you feel as though you're the one being humiliated. So that was the basic premise. The Democrats have never been good at slinging mud. Harsh Republican tactics devastated Dukakis (remember him riding in the tank, ouch) and Kerry (flip-flopping while wind surfing, ugly). The Dems need more people like myself who are willing to embrace the sleazeball movement. Obama is much more proactive than the two aforementioned candidates but still doesn't like to throw mud. Probably a wise strategy. It really doesn't suit his "above the fray" personality.
I'll admit, when I heard that no signs would be permitted, I was mildly devastated. Obviously someone must have held up a pro-choice sign at a Palin rally recently and the entire campaign went into lockdown mode. I can't place too much blame on the Sarah Palin campaign. It's to be expected. The last thing you need is some outside curveballs being hurled at this poorly run campaign with less than 4 weeks to go.
So here's more of the play by play. I had planned to attend the event with some of my "assistants," but all 5 of them bailed for a variety of reasons. No big deal. I really didn't need the emotional support and it was a long night for some of them. A mutual friend got married the night before. She used to be a friend of mine but I never really expected an invite to her wedding. 10 years ago I made many derogatory statments directed toward her Chow dog thing. She didn't like it when I ridiculed the dog's behavior. In rerospect, that dog "Caleb" was on the extreme low end in the "dog-milieu." So I zipped up solo. As I said, no big deal.
Got there around 2pm. The rally was scheduled to start at 3pm and Sarah would eventually take to the stage at 5:30pm. I hung out with some Obama protesters at the interesection near the interstate for about 20 minutes. Just some union guys in their 50's. About 4 of them. Not exactly a large opposition presence. Basically, people would drive by and yell "Communist" or "Obama sucks" and they'd yell back "Screw you." Not really the direction I wanted to veer toward. During this time, I met these two guys who were shooting a documentary about the campaign. Pretty interesting. They wanted me to read my Sarah Palin poem for the camera, so I obliged them. Incidentally, I wrote a derogatory poem about Sarah Palin and printed out 500 copies. I was going to hand them as people exited Brush Run Park. Just an attempt to piss people off as they were riding a "Sarah Palin delirious high." I know, I know - this makes me a complete asshole. SO BE IT. What else is new?
Anyway, I just basically walked around and observed the crowd for a while. Very homogenous, synthetic, contrived... I'd say about 3,800 people showed up the event. Maybe as much as 4,500. As far as minorities go, I counted 2 black men, 1 black woman and 1 Asian woman with her kids. Honestly, that was it. Then again, this is Flushing, Ohio (not Flushing, NY), so I wasn't exactly expecting the Black Panthers or the ACLU supports the Afro-American Negro College fund people. Anyway, Jepsonite called me while I was there and I encouraged him to stop by since he lives only 5 minutes away. So we entered the facility about 4pm. It was pretty hot out for early October and I think the rally went on for way too long. A little over three hours in its entirety. Most everyone was in good spirits, but you could sense a little exhaustion and fatigue. An attractive female country musician rallied the crowd, "I love all those signs. I wish I could read all of them!" Kind of an unusual comment since all the signs were IDENTICAL as I alluded to earlier (COUNTRY FIRST). In reflection, I should have snagged one for Jay Country of the message board. That would make a cool avatar.
I must admit, the logistics of the rally were exceptional. Very smooth and orderly. The crowd was VERY enthusiastic. The setting was serene and the delivery was top-notch. As the McCain bus rolled in, the crowd went bonkers. There was this delirious unified passion that was evident amongst the crowd. Screams of We Love you Sarah - U.S.A. - Drill Bay Drill seemed to be the norm. Very little extemperaneous speaking. She did remark on the smell of fresh cut hay. And at one point the crowd spontaneously roared "Mine Baby Mine" - an odd reference to the abundance of coal in the region. But she basically stayed on message. "There's only one man who has ever really fought for you." "Can we really trust him." "He's going to raise your taxes and increase the size of government." etc. All the standard Republican fodder and regurgitated soundbytes.
I should mention that we left the rally while she was still speaking so missed about 3/5 of it. My buddy didn't want to get stuck in traffic. And I wanted to be ready to distribute my poem at the conclusion of the rally. I handed out my poem to cars exiting the park. The vast majority of people thanked me which is kind of amusing. They probably thought I was handing out "Buy one get one free" dinner coupons at Hoss's. Two people started to read the poem and threw it out their window. I purposely wrote "Do Not Litter" on the poem, but that failed to sissuade them. I immediately retrieved them. Another woman got out of her car, handed me back the poem and called me a coward. I asked her why I was a coward, and she fired back. "That's just what you are, a coward." I tried to reason with her. Here I am on total enemy turf and she's calling ME a coward. I tried to explain that she should have called me an asshole or dickead, far more appropriate than coward, but she walked back to her vehicle in a huff. That was pretty much my only accomplishment of the day - pissing people off. Oh well, hardly the first time I've ever pissed anyone off. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist about my overwhelming desire to anger the churchies. By the way, the poem itself wasn't very good. The rhymes were not that clever and there was even a slight error which I failed to correct as I hurriedly printed them out. Hardly my best work.
What really upset me was the lack of national press coverage. No Fox, no MSNBC, no CNN. Just their local affiliates and a European satellite operation of some kind. That was it. You'd think they'd have the big boys there. What if she made a serious gaffe or something unusual transpired (like some moron with a dinosaur sign showed up)? I also had a sign that said..

HUNTERS FOR PALIN
Kill Baby Kill

Oh well, back to drawing board. I'm going on a local radio talk show today in a couple hours to discuss recent events. We'll see how it goes...