An Interesting Day.....
Joe Gandelman
Be sure to check back here often for our report on an anti-anti-war demonstration in San Diego. Our day started yesterday by doing some guest blogging here, then heading over to Balboa Park where anti-war protesters were marking the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
Citizen Smash had invited yours truly to observe his counter demonstration, which he vowed would be simply to thank the troops and not blast the anti-war demonstrators. We will detail what we saw here later this morning. Read Smash's post and you'll see his accurate description of the anti-war demonstration: it was truly a small turnout. We took lots of notes and description and you'll see it here.
Why not do it now? Well, in my other incarnation I appeared last night in the Miss El Cajon Beauty Pagent stage show at the East County Performing Arts Center. I didn't realize it until I got there, but my stage appearance was along with more than a dozen celebrity look alikes flown in from all over the country (I sat there in the backstage room as all of these famous looking people walked in, in full costume). These folks looked and talked like the twins of the celebrities who they impersonate: Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jim Carey, Robert DeNiro (that guy had doubled for DeNiro in films), Abbott& Costello, Mimi from Drew Carey, Aretha Franklin, Joan Rivers, Whoppi Goldberg, Jack Nicolson, Rodney Dangerfield, Kramer..and a few more. It was quite an experience...but it ended very late.
Rather than shove the post through on the demonstration, we're posting this to alert you that we will get up early and give you a full report on what we saw and heard in Balboa Park.
Stay tuned...
FOONOTE: To those who will write: "How can you call yourself a moderate if you attended that demonstration" (let's deal with this in advance), FYI: I covered demonstrations as a journalist in New Delhi, Madrid, San Diego and Tijuana. I have covered lots of them, talking to all sides, and was quite interested to see what each side focused on and how they presented their case. I even bought a new tape recorder for the event. Stay tuned..UPDATE: Get a headstart on me (my post will not appear until 8 a.m. PST at the earliest) by reading Da Goddess...who we will tell you was there as a participant and is as eloquent in person as she is on her blog. As someone who was trying to look at it as a nonparticipant we will say: almost everything she said was marked by nobility. We left thinking about her — even as we entered the hall for our stage show... And we have the quotes to prove it later today...
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI