I'm calling a Gladwell today.
Today on CNN I saw coverage of these 'military funeral' protesters.
Something struck me as strange. I can't put my finger on it, but I'll try: there was only a few of them visible, like five at the most. They had sunglasses on, all of them. Their clothes look like somebody made a hasty trip to Old Navy to get 'protest gear'. And they spoke with deep, deep accents. (OK, I know, you can't judge someone by an accent, and all anti-war protests are alike but I throw it in the mix with the other suspicious factors...it is strange to hear those type of accents completely dominate all members of a protest) And call me crazy but those signs, those signs look like the result of a well-funded organization, not scrappy protests.
If you are a reader of Malcom Gladwell's Blink you are aware of the concept of thin-slicing where you can look at something and it doesn't add up, and perhaps not explain why. Great art forgeries, he says, were detected this way. I'm calling a Gladwell here. This protest just doesn't 'look' real.
Are they real, or are they a creation from the mind of Rove? Is this a great straw man strategy for 2006?
Being that the focus of legit anti-war protests so far has been so anchored in 'support the troops, not the war' being that the main spokesperson of the anti-war movement right now is a mother who had to endure the horrible event of a military funeral for her son, I couldn't believe that these protests were legit.
After researching I see that these are members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. They are bizzarely protesting the funerals becase they are anti-gay. There is no logic whatsoever to their case, except that they say God is killing soldiers.
Unfortunately watching CNN's report this morning, you would not be able to know that this group has views that are counter to most liberal activists and anti-war protesters, and progressive groups. CNN mentioned it was a church, but did nothing to divide these protesters from protesters of the Iraq War policy.
Maybe they are just a wacko group, but my fear is the GOP may use this group to straw man Democrats. They will link military protests to anti-war protests, and Democrats to anti-war protests. So far no politicians are on it (except for what appears to be legit state efforts to ban funeral protests in MN and Iowa)
Even if they don't use it to bash Democrats, watch every GOP House Candidate take a 'stand' against these protesters. It's the next best to thing to banning burning the flag.
Just wait for the GOP organized emails to come out saying Cindy Sheehan, Jane Fonda, John Kerry or Howard Dean are at these funerals. Once again will have to point our mislead friends to snopes.com and make that rhetorical uphill struggle to tell them that no there are good protesters and bad protesters, we support the troops, etc.
And there remains the possiblity the entire group is set up. Since Karl Rove in the past had flyers plastered bashing his one of own clients to cull the sympathy vote, guessing that this one is his work does not require a lot of imagination.
Update:Okay, so from the comments its seems the Westboro Church is legit and has been hating gays for a long time... So Rove didn't create the chruch, I get that. But my question is: who turned him on to using military funerals as a way to express his hatred for gays? Seems to me he either wants war protesters to look bad, or somebody put him up to it.