Failing in AM/FM

I’ve lived in central Portland all of my life, and downtown much of that, and during that time, I’ve attended innumerable rallies, protests, and whatnot.  I still remember last fall, when a friend and I were contemplating going to the Obama rally, hours hence, and from my balcony noticed a line forming below.  It took two hours to get to Tom McCall Waterfront Park, ten blocks away.  I also fondly recall the Peace Rally, the largest in the country, before Gulf War I, just after our Republican Senior Senator, Mark Hatfield, had spoken forcefully in the Senate as the lonely voice in his party that wanted to give peace a chance.  That day flagged us for eternity on the right as the treacherous residents of “Little Beirut, a circumstance in which I repeatedly take pride, like I did today.  The teabaggers, unfortunately for them, picked the same spot, and the difference was palpable.  In a bad way, natch.

Walking down the park, where the Duomo-like rows of elms that I consider my front yard are just leafing into their corridor-like canopy, it seemed  a bit surreal that I was going to a rally.  Where were the people?  Where was the traffic?  More disturbingly, given some of the peculiarities of the teabaggers themselves, where were the cops?  A block away, I finally began to hear the canned sound and responses.  Pioneer square, reclaimed by the city after the gorgeous Victorian Portland Hotel had been felled for a parking garage that blighted downtown for thirty years, is the site of many gatherings, big (real) and small (fake).  This was one of the small ones, and fake as the day is long, and its weak, lackadaisical attempt to disguise the fact was drearily apparent.  Like any contest or promotion, this one had a strong presence of corporate sponsorship, in this case KPAM, which is the furthest right of the Clear Channel “family” that dominates local radio as the media component, and something called “clear,” which I have every reason to believe is that same company’s bid to dominate the internet, too.  Clear.com.  Hmmm.

The small, rather listless crowd, which was nonetheless spurred to yell on cue, had a hapless, otherwordly feel; they were in hostile territory, but somehow disappointed that the experience wasn’t scarier.  The speaker I first heard was talking about God’s wrath, and after a few others it wasn’t readily apparent things were going uphill from there.  It isn’t easy, in a place that considers a 50,000 crowd average, to look big and consequential when there’s about fifteen hundred of you.  They bravely held up their signs, “Barack Obama is the Black Jimmy Carter, Honk if I’m paying your Mortgage, and, Atlas is Gonna Shrug,” my personal favorite, but the whole thing felt so, well, sad. Normal people walked the perimeter, eyed and eyeing warily.  The media/ observer vs. participant ratio would have astonished me had it been greater than 1/1.

The choppers that had darkened the skies and made life downtown feel like Vietnam for hours were already gone by 6:35, when I, too, fled for wetter pastures.  I hope they all find their way home.  A rough and disappointing night for everyone but me…  It was about the easiest and least time-consuming event I’d ever attended.

Pictures to come; my computer stupidity would have held off this report for hours had I put them in first.