Yeah. The mayor has always had a long series of photo-ops to try to present herself as a liberal, but she really just cares about 4th street where she converted a warehouse area into an upscale shopping strip with Pottery barn etc. She will do something somewhat ineffective like declare that Berkeley will only purchase fair trade coffee (how much coffee does Berkeley buy?) and then send out press releases and get on the cover of the newspaper. Another conservative on the council had this weird proposal to endorse the purple teletubby, which became another crazy Bezerkeley story. The mayor made an opportunity from K. Worthington's criticism of the boyscouts, and I think she got on the O'Reilly factor for that too.
There was an anti-berkeley pro war rally largely made up of out of towners a few weeks ago. I walked through 10 minutes beforehand but couldn't stay. I watched this couple who had driven all the way from Truckee search around for some people to argue with, and they found an older nonstudent finally. I think that a lot of people with general feelings of angst want someone to focus their anger on, and they need or count on the other 'side' being so ridiculous as to have made a pro-bin Laden endorsement. The usual anti-war group didn't come. Previously there had been a few yell-in type of rallies where about 400 antiwar and 250 from the new young-democrat young republican alliance would try to shout each other down. Instead, some made extreme signs like 'today's children, tomorrow's terrorists, kill them all! Students against Islamic Terrorism S.H.I.T.' or a crossed out peace sign, and they blended in with the crowd and got in the paper. Christine
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