Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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The Polite-est Generation

Monday, December 11, 2000

(Go to the Mullings Update page for the
latest from Florida)

I might be wrong about this, but I don't believe I have heard of a single arrest at any demonstration, in Texas, in Florida, or in Washington, DC during the course of this post-election period.

This, in the face of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton running around Florida fomenting ill-will; this, in the face of paid staffers on both sides doing professional crowd-building; this, in the face of the most partisan local elected officials getting their fifteen minutes of fame (plus the fifteen minutes which will now never go to their aunts, uncles, cousins, children, and grandchildren) during the cable news networks' All-Breathless-All-The-Time coverage.

Forget about tanks in the streets. The worst case of unruliness has been that scene outside the Miami-Dade counting room where Republican Congressional staffers were caught on camera, in effect, angrily throwing the keys to their health club lockers into a pile in protest.

Unruliness? What a civilized word that is. Unruliness? It sounds like marauding bands of partisans running around mussing peoples' hair, giving nuggies, and throwing each other into the bushes.

What ever happened to "Days of Rage"? Or, "No Justice, No Peace?" Or any chant starting with the words, "Hey, hey, ho, ho"?

Ground zero for the Counterculture of the '60s was Haight-Ashbury. Ground zero for the Haute-culture of the '00s is Adams-Morgan.

Who are the protest singers of this era? Joan Baez and Bob Dylan have been replaced by Britney Spears and � Yanni. It says something about something that the number one album on the Billboard Top Internet Sales chart is - The Beatles.

While waiting for the MSNBC or Fox News cameras to be turned on, instead of studying "The Little Red Book" containing sayings by Chairman Mao, many of the demonstrators appear to be studying "The Christmas Book" containing gifts by Neiman-Marcus.

Even during the World Bank meetings in Your Nation's Capital last summer we had more creativity. Remember the guy who dressed up in a cow costume and dumped a load of manure right in front of the building where the meetings were being held? At least he made a statement. (As I recall, most observers put him down as "leaning against.")

The loudest shouting over this election has not been in the streets of Washington, or Austin, or Tallahassee. The loudest shouting has been on the information superhighway via AOL, Earthlink and the other major e-mail providers.

I know I am not alone in the receipt of hundreds of e-mails a day which are written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, punctuated with dozens of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'s just to make certain I don't miss an essential point.

ANY body who has had ANY thought on ANY subject at ANY point in this process has felt the need to type it out and e-mail it to everyone on their distribution list.

Oh. Um. Never mind about that one.

I have a request. The next time there is some major development in this story, please stay off your cell phone so I can get through on MY cell phone. Not to worry. I'll say exactly the same words you were going to say: "Can you believe this?"

This is why he's the Senior Editor: Here is sentence from Howard Fineman's piece on the dueling courts in the current edition of Newsweek: "Since the 1960s, Americans have increasingly come to feel that every public wrong has a legal redress, every right a writ to protect it, every unfairness a cure from the equitable powers of justice."

In the spirit of the season, everyone - Republicans and Democrats - put on your honest face and come clean. On the subject of judicial partisanship, when you heard the Florida Supreme Court ruling and when you heard the US Supreme Court ruling; you had exactly opposite reactions.

I'll admit it. On Friday evening, after the Florida Supreme Court ruling, the draft title for this edition of Mullings was: "Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Sleepy �"

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