False Equivalency--Updated!This Rolling Stone
article by Matt Taibbi paints a pretty clear picture of the zoo around Camp Casey:
If the pre-Sheehan anti-war movement had a problem, it was stuff like this. The movement likes to think of itself as open and inclusive, but in practice it often comes off like a bunch of nerds whose favored recreation is coming up with clever passwords for their secret treehouse. The ostensible political purpose may be ending the war, but the immediate occupation for a sizable percentage of these people always seemed to be a kind of rolling adult tourist attraction called Hating George Bush. Marches become Hate Bush Cruises; vigils, Hate Bush Resorts. Hence the astonishingly wide variety of anti-Bush tees (Camp Casey featured a rare film-fantasy matched set, home at various times to BUSH IS SAURON and DARTH INVADER); the unstoppable flow of Bush-themed folk songs. If you spend any amount of time involved with peace protests, as I have, you very quickly start to notice that Hating the President just seems like a little too much of a fun thing for too many of your brothers-in-arms.But get the false equivalency:
Then again, here as in the rest of America, there's no shortage of folks who spend too much time sick with the opposite disease, Loving the President. In downtown Crawford, the two groups are separated by a Mason-Dixon line. While the anti-Bush protesters congregate at a Zonker Harris-style commune called the Crawford Peace House, the pro-Bush crowd has a meeting place in a giant gift shop called the Yellow Rose.You see? There are people who hate the President too much and there are people who love him too much. Except of course that the hate Bush crowd will blame him for a car stuck in the ditch, while it's doubtful the love Bush crowd will attempt to give him credit when the sun pokes through the clouds.
More on that theme:
It's a striking visual scene: On one side of the railroad tracks running through town there's a creaky old house, bedecked with peace signs, that looks like the home of the Partridge family. A few hundred yards away, across the tracks, is the Yellow Rose -- a patriotic storefront drenched in red, white and blue whose entrance is obscured by a Liberty Bell, flanked by two huge stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. Together, the two places look like a pair of rides in a Crossfire theme park.On the one hand, you've got a bunch of peacenik kooks and on the other hand, you have folks who love their country. It's not too hard to figure out where Matt's sympathies lie despite his attempt at "even-handedness".
Update:
Pam Meister has more.
