Who's pulling the protestor's strings? (editorial)

[mburbank]

Did you give them your credit card number?

what exactly is it you think ANSWER did for the peace rallies. What do you think they paid for and what do you think they got out of it? I'll admit to ignorance on the subject, I already have, but the coverage I saw of the peace marches mentioned my agenda and never said Squat about Answer.

In the hypothetical situation you mentioned, if your message got out loud and clear and ''sponsorship' by your shadowy string pullers didn't, I'd say they failed. If, unbeknownst to you, they paid for the bottled water I would in no way think you'd been compromised by drinking it or that your message had been, forgive me, "dilluted". If any attempts to coop your message were utterly drowned out by your message I might not even know.

Do you think this is why Bush belittles the peace marches? He wouldn't care one way or the other, he says their focus groups. While I would of course like to know that every peace rally was only about my personal vision of peace, I think I'm unlikely to get that.

What system would you suggest to strain the impurities from a large scale rally? How rigorous should they be and how long should a given event be postponed until purity of message is achieved? All sides of every issue are always vulnerable to being manipulated. You yourslef may have been manipulated to believe so strongly that 'strings have been pulled'. I'm not excusing this by saying 'everybody does it'. That's a misread, although I think it ironic that the same standards are only taken seriously when applied to the left wing. Remeber how absurd Ms. Clinton looked when she talked about a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? The left is, if anything, far less organized and conspiracy capable than the right. Conspiracy takes discipline.