On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Chuck0 wrote:
> Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I had a possible insight into
> how to neutralize the slogan being used more and more by the pro-war
> forces.
Actually, at the march in New York, I thought it was remarkable the extent to which the "Support the Troops" slogan was successfully countered by the "Support the Troops -- Bring Them Home" counterslogan. When I was marching, I actually thought it was a bit overemphasized and boring. But when I saw snuck out to check it out on TV, I was amazed. CNN would interview one person after another, always finishing by asking "Finally, what do you say to people who say we have to support our troops now that they're in harm's way?" and always getting a hearfelt variant of the same answer: We support our troops and that's why we want to bring them home. They even made it into a text caption undercrawling the pictures ("Demonstrators support troops -- they want to bring them home") to my complete astonishment, since everything else they said or put up seemed designed as usual to diminish us. I don't think I've ever seen a demonstration so successfully on message.
I have to admit though, my favorite chant was different. To the beat of de-DAH-da:
This WAR is for PROfit It's BULLshit Let's STOP it
That's a lot of fun to chant. Especially when people got drums.
Michael