penance
I felt bad about missing the protest in D.C., so I followed Erica's suggestion and went on a Planned Parenthood Bar Crawl tonight. I got Gernot and Simon to come along, and I was thus responsible for the presence of the entire male contingent of the party. We walked through a few mostly deserted bars, handing out condoms and literature about how the Bush Administration seeks to destroy abortion, sex ed, and gay rights. My presence was pretty much superfluous- the bar patrons were almost exclusively lonely middle-aged men who were most effectively reached through the attentions of energetic, pink-clad young women. Still, solidarity, or something.

Since just about everyone we encountered was already bleeding heart liberal, I figured I might as well recruit some new activists. But the one person I did actually engage didn't go all that well. She quickly fell into the liberal elitist rant- it's impossible to get the New York Times in Ithaca, can't imagine what they do for news in the midwest- feels like there's no way she can have an effect on people there. I tried to get her to look past that, to explain how the important thing is to make noise, even if it's preaching to the choir or deaf ears. But she was a bit drunk and it was an inappropriate venue for philosohpical debate.

I'm really quite astounded at the encounter actually. The fact that I didn't just simply concur with her polemic really seemed to unsettle her. OK- in challenging her rant I did violate the social conventions of the bar scene, but well, the importance of the bar scene in American culture is itself quite telling.

So yeah- fucking liberals.