On Vigils and Protests

A well-meaning-right-corrupted friend of mine e-mails me enough material to fuel an excellent blog, However, should I ask him for permission the material would probably dry up faster than a piss puddle in Mosul.

But this latest gem of his brought out some good musing so I thought I would share it. Here was his latest:

Man, you guys are so blind. The Dems could put a monkey up and you'd vote
for it.

Today is going to be crazy for me, so I don't think I'll be able to
participate too much.

Two things: My girl Ann Coulter has a great book out ... How to deal with
Democrats, only if it is necessary. Also, the Dem Party has become so
pathetic that it now calls "Protests", "Vigils".

What a bunch of pin-headed loosers!

Ignore if you will the rest of the vitriole and focus solely on the bold faced type that is of course my doing. He has a point! This is utter bullshit if I have ever heard it. Like some magic trick, protests have now become vigils! And sometimes even the vice versa occurs! So my response is as follows. Excuse the lack of regard to basic grammar, I am of the school of thought that e-mail invokes thoughts of e.e. cummings and so I emmulate him in my e-correspondence:

The reason protests are now vigils is the same reason a warmongering spendthrift is called a "compassionate conservative"

and there are two answers that are actually the same.
1. focus groups.
2. since protests have become associated with anti-americanism, terrorist appeasement, flag-burning, bra-burning, draft-card-burning, and violent extremist anti-patriotism, we need a new terminology to give it a rosey look and feel.

reinvent it if you will. vigils have a faith based connotation and as such require a bit more respect from the right wing smear machinations.

since this country and the left thinks they need to insert faith into every single issue in order to a) avoid criticism, b) avoid the appearance of criticism, or c) gain legitimacy, they feel it necessary to use semantics to fool stupid people who listen to sean hannity.

but the short answer is again, focus-groups.

and i don't know if you can tell by my response here, but I think its a bunch of bullshit and useless semantics. as a matter of fact i'll go further and call it exactly what it is, a major problem that faces this country. political correctness to this degree (not necessarily all degrees) keeps the citizenry of this country stupid enough to go along with anything their political leaders tell them to. vigils, bullshit. its a protest dammit. and the causes are justified in most cases at the very least by the 1st ammendment.

But alas protest (that form of patriotism so high on the patriotic scale of patriotism that it is protected by the very 1st ammendment to the constitution) has been demonized by the right. or whomever you would like to call them. For if they are the libertarians that preach freedom mongering, than their demonization of the all american protest is a vile perverted contradiction of their freedom filled rhetoric.

SO I will continue to call them PROTESTS. If possible, the word itself should be written in alternate colors of red white and blue.

I am sure my buddy S will write back.