{"id":1455,"date":"2004-07-22T11:26:30","date_gmt":"2004-07-22T15:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/07\/22\/the-protesters\/"},"modified":"2004-07-22T11:26:30","modified_gmt":"2004-07-22T15:26:30","slug":"the-protesters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/07\/22\/the-protesters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Protesters"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

So one of the big news stories here in Boston is about the protesters and whether they have an adequate\/appropriate space<\/a> to conduct their protests.<\/p>\n

Has anyone asked whether it really matters?<\/p>\n

Seriously.  The protesters are not going to convince the delegates
\nof anything.  You don’t get to be a delegate in the Democratic
\nparty if your opinions are easily malleable, subject to change if
\nsomeone, like a protester, contends against them.  The protesters
\nare not going to convince other protesters, who are all pretty
\ncommitted to their opinions already (otherwise they wouldn’t be
\nprotesting).  They’re not really going to convince the public,
\nbecause the public will be largely absent the whole thing.<\/p>\n

What the protesters want is a few of those cameras trained at the
\nlarger event, a little exposure, a few minutes on television, and the
\nresultant “controversy” that it all indicates.<\/p>\n

The press at large will likely report that the protesters outside the
\nFleet indicate that there is controversey over the Democrats’ stances
\non various issues, like abortion, gun control, gay marriage, tax
\npolicy, the war, and so forth.  There might even be controversy
\nwithin the ranks of the Democratic party.  And they’ll report this
\nbecause they’re bored with the script that the DNC (and later the RNC)
\nwill present of unity and cooperation.  But the media will be
\nfollowing its own script, as it largely does in these things. 
\nReporters almost always act as if there is contention in every
\noccurrence, “two sides to every story,” equal and opposite conflict in
\nall of human affairs.<\/p>\n

But there’s not.  And this reportorial trope leads to some
\nridiculous circumstances, such as when reporting on the Holocaust and
\nincluding the voices of Holocaust deniers as legitimate.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the protesters don’t have legitimate things to
\nsay.  They do have some legitimate, contendable viewpoints in our
\npolitical life.  But what they really hope to accomplish is
\nunclear.  Opinions probably won’t change, the Democratic party
\nopinions and platform won’t change, and their media exposure will be
\ncoopted into one of two scripts.  Either the protestors are
\nslightly nutty, slightly (or more) extreme, slightly out-of-touch, OR
\nthe protesters indicate a serious threat to the Democratic party
\nestablishment because they can’t be controlled, and they represent
\nsignificant dissent.<\/p>\n

Yes, the portrayal that gets played up in any particular media outlet
\nwill likely depend on whether it’s broadly supportive of the Dems or
\nnot.  So Fox News, for example, will likely subscribe to the
\nsecond view.  But the smartest commentators will see the game for
\nwhat it is AND call it.  If you see that from any reporting, then
\nit’s time to begin asking questions about why and what it means.<\/p>\n

If you want to see this sort of falsity in action, head on over to
\nBoston Common on Sunday morning.  There, across from the Paulist Center Chapel<\/a>,
\nprotesters from Operation Rescue and the “Christian Defense League”
\nwill picket the church.  Why?  Because it’s where John and
\nTeresa Kerry go to church when they are in Boston, since it’s the Roman
\nCatholic church closest to their home on Beacon Hill.  But the
\nchurch can’t stop giving Eucharist to Kerry just because there’s public
\npressure to do so; excommunication is a formal legal process in the
\nchurch’s canon law, such that a huge matter like cutting a person off
\nfrom the Sacraments cannot happen solely at the discretion of a priest
\nor even a bishop alone.  Also, I’d be suspicious if the members of
\nthe “Christian Defense League” were not primarily fundamentalist
\nProtestants of some sort, and so their voice in the matter should not
\ncount.  They’re less eligible to receive the Eucharist than John
\nKerry is.<\/p>\n

So I ask in a sense of honest inquiry, what will the protesters (of all
\nstripes) get?  Some public exposure, sure, but will it really
\nbenefit them?<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for some thoughts about the life of politics, via M. Weber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So one of the big news stories here in Boston is about the protesters and whether they have an adequate\/appropriate space to conduct their protests. Has anyone asked whether it really matters? Seriously.  The protesters are not going to convince the delegates of anything.  You don’t get to be a delegate in the Democratic party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-nt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}