Monday, November 05, 2007

Well, there's something you don't see every day...

A swarm of rioting lawyers. In ties.

It's hard to know who to cheer for here; on the one hand you have the corrupt paramilitary police of an oppressive quasi-dictatorship that are quashing free speech and dissent, but on the other hand they're tear-gassing just scads of lawyers and reporters. Tough call.

But the funky part is the well-dressed riot. I think it's so jarring to the senses because in America our fist shaking demonstrators tend to be college students and bohemian slackers, and so we're used to protesters being dressed like fashion-challenged hippies or roadies for Rage Against The Machine. Folks who wear ties usually have jobs and are therefore too busy to get involved in silly things like riots or voting for Ralph Nader, so seeing a crowd of them rioting in the street has that same disorienting feeling of wrongness as seeing an alligator in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.

12 comments:

Roberta X said...

I was gonna pop pocorn and set out soada, until I realized Pakistan has The B0mb. This produced two sobering thoughts:

1. Is there any chance we'll see if lawyers surive radiation as well as cockroaches?

2. OMG -- lawyers with The B0mb? Oh, wait, most politicians everywhere are... Ew. Ew.

Anonymous said...

O manoman, there's so many ways you can go with this. First ahem, I suppose this is what "moderation" looks like in the [Mmm]lim world; in Iran you can't wear one when you riot. They're taken by a Certain High Official to be a miniature Xtian cross--unlike the symbolic noose they're usually taken as here.

Then, I remember silent newsreel footage of a glitzy Cal.theatre whose marquee proclaimed "Tonight Only: Leon Trotsky." And there he was, haranguing away to a packed house, wearing a skinny tie and looking to our distant eyes every inch the gentleman. In those days, the width, length, color, fabric and knot of neckwear told a whole story--a language, like Greenaway's flower vocabulary, now lost to us. So are those Paki solicitors (not barristers: whole 'nother language) in four-in-hands, or half-Windsors? Could make all the difference.

And then FWIW, I've never seen a photo of Nader without one.

I can't tell you how nice it is to hear from you. Do this sick sorry world a favor: be Tamara K. all day long.

phlegmfatale said...

Yeah, it's not a real protest without naked hippies, is it?

Rustmeister said...

Hmm, corrupt jackbooted thugs on one side, lawyers and reporters on the other?

Wasn't the MOAB designed for this specific occurrence?

NotClauswitz said...

Just goes to show how the lazy and slovenly Left who are without taste in dress or behavior have hijacked even the nature of protesting, as they have hijacked the term "Liberal" from it's classical foundation.
If well-dressed and well behaved people were engaged in protest (like for gun-rights, school vouchers, anti-pork) then more attention might be force-paid to their grievances - and the buffoons and retards at Code Pink and whatnot could be more easily ignored for the fools they be.

Anonymous said...

Did somebody say naked hippeis?

Fits said...

Any truly civilized country should have laws demanding that a lawyer be set upon by baton waving police so kudos to Paki.

Franklin Kool Aid said...

Hello Tam (if I may),

Just got a Glock 22 and absoultely love it - probably the most accurate handgun I've ever fired.

Yep - I've read all about the Kb! issues and "unsupported chamber," (with early models) but compared it to my other small arms - not much difference if any.

What do you think?

Carteach said...

Hitting lawyers with long sticks, as a government policy.
.....
.....
.......

Nawww, nothing I can really add to that.

Feanaro said...

A country has got to be seriously outta whack when lawyers will risk their suits and paychecks by throwing rocks at the police. My mind flounders when I try to imagine my lawyer shaking his skinny fists at The Man.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Dirtcrashr nails it. It's all about the "ethos" of the protestors. Like the very first civil-rights protesters, the lawyers are saying, "We are respectable people, and we are angry!"

That's the way it used to be done before the anti-Vietnam War crowd started dressing for the street battles that they hoped to provoke with the police. (Or check out the South Koreans, where protesters wear helmets, leather jackets, etc., in the hope of violence.)

I find the lawyers' use of civilized garb to be touching and effective. It's not an occasion for lawyer jokes, really.

Chas S. Clifton said...

Following up on my own comment, consider this speculation on whether the Paki lawyers are protecting civil, secular law or not.

I think that they are. The alternatives are (a) military dictatorship or (b) Taliban-style Sharia law. Who among us wants those?