Inauguration prompts rise of middle finger

Column: Media Bias

By: Steve Markley

Posted: 1/28/05

I can now say that I've driven a round trip of 20 hours just to flip a guy off. This past week I went to protest the inauguration of George W. Bush, making a feverish drive in the dead of night to Washington, D.C., missing two days of class, one day of work, and my own grandfather's open heart surgery to be witness to this madness. I waited in a surging mass of people, both protesters and supporters, for over three hours waiting to be frisked by military personnel. A guy with dreadlocks stood on a concrete barrier screaming into this sea of people, "Sheep! You're all sheep!" A group of protesters came barreling down a side street, taking the police by surprise. They lobbed snowballs and threw their flagsticks into the cops, who responded with pepper spray and billy clubs. It was crazy - sheer, unadulterated madness. Of course you wouldn't know that from watching the news. CNN spared about two minutes for the protests in favor of Jenna Bush's dress (admittedly, once I saw the cleavage, I was on board with this). Every channel had coverage of this beaming parade that didn't look a damn thing like what I saw. Oh well. It was enough to get a look at all the Bush fans. Absent from this group were those God-fearing middle-Americans who got this buffoon re-elected. The true base had emerged: rich old white people. The Haves and the Have-Mores. The kind of cats from whom it would actually be funny to ask for Grey Poupon. There were so many women in fur coats, I kept expecting to turn a street corner and find the entire cast of Bambi clubbed, drowned, and skinned. Luckily, my middle finger was for them, too. Some critics might say, "Markley, flipping off the President is a pointless, immature, juvenile act." To which I would respond, "No duh." Did it do any good when I went to a Dick Cheney rally back in June and for three hours held up my sign, "Dick, you're such a greedy sleazebag I couldn't even think of what to put on this sign?" Of course not. That sign - like my middle finger - didn't cost the Bush Administration a single vote. But damn did it feel good. So while the inauguration was nauseating to the point that I was vomiting out bits of my small intestine, it was also a blast in that breathless, cathartic, "the-ex-girlfriend-who-dumped-you-just-got-knocked-up" sort of way. At least that feeling held for a while. Before I left D.C., I visited the Vietnam War Memorial where the names of 55,209 men are inscribed in black granite. I stood there for a while watching the people come and go, mostly the same women in fur coats and others wearing Bush pins, and slowly that feeling of excitement and rebellion faded. I watched these people stare history in the face, their eyes glancing casually over the names of 55,209 kids who died thousands of miles from home for reasons so murky that the government could only categorize such deaths under the all-purpose banner of "defending his country." I thought of four names listed in the paper that morning - four more innocent kids dead because of the mistakes, arrogance, and hubris of our "leaders." If that's not reason enough to hold up your middle finger, someone tell me what is.