I Heart Protest Signs

I am loving, repeat, love-ing the protests that have been occurring recently. And while watching people exercise their right to peaceably assemble is great and all, there is the factor that far exceeds the necessary confines of the US Constitution which makes me nearly giddy with joy. That would be the amusement factor and it comes to us in these protests via the protest sign.

I've said before that, with regard to the health care protests, the majority of the signs display correct punctuation and spelling. Let's just say that at protests which are protesting something other than health care reform, the need for some sort of a magical poster board with built-in spell check is painfully obvious.

But the signs are now starting to go down a couple of different paths. The first path is the "Path of the Irrelevant and/or Hilarious". Folks have realized that all of those tubes and pipes and wires and stuff that make up the Internets can offer a clear and easy path toward their fifteen minutes of fame (which, given the state of society lately, will almost inevitably lead to a book deal for the sign bearer). The only way that it could be any easier is if they were a cute little kitten with poor grammar skills. So while there are still plenty of the serious and grammatically correct protest signs, there are also signs like these popping up:

Crystal Pepsi? No, that doesn't sound gay at all.

But the other path that folks are taking these days is the "Path of Anger and/or Hitler References". Generally, these signs are proudly displayed by morons. If they're not a complete moron, then they're simply not quite as informed as they think that they are. (I'm just trying to be fair here. It's likely they're all morons.) And while I'm not defending Hitler (I'm NOT!), I'm really over all of the Hitler references.

Look, by comparing Obama to Hitler, you're doing a couple of things. One is that you're making yourself look like a nutjob. But the other thing that you're doing is you are minimizing the atrocities that Hitler committed. Think about it. You are likening health care reform to the human extermination of millions of Jews during W.W. II? Really? I don't see how the two are similar at all. Not even the slightest bit. Health care reform. Holocaust. They both start with the letter "h", but that's alI can give you. They're not the same.

My contribution toward getting folks to shy away from the Hitler references is going to be to start referring to that little moustache (people draw on pictures of President Barry) as "The Chaplin". Why does Hitler get all of the credit for that little 'stache? Charlie Chaplin had one. Lou Costello had one. Let's not group two of the finest entertainers to walk the planet with the likes of Adolf Hitler, shall we?

And I've been seeing quite a few signs that are Hitler-esque in nature and I wondered how come people who protested against things that George W. Bush did chose not to go with the Hitler comparison? That's when I learned that they did.

They did?! Really?! How come I never heard about them? The cable newsholes are all up in arms about the President Barry is Adolf Hitler signs, why weren't the newsholes up in arms about the G.W. is A.H. signs? Or any of the other ones like the ones below? Behold!

The easiest answer, the one that I really don't want to be true, is that there is an unhealthy amount of media bias which is in favor of President Barry. For instance, when these posters of President Barry as The Joker started popping up in Los Angeles, I didn't see what the big deal was. I still don't. (It's not as if there aren't hundreds of Photoshopped images of President Barry online. I don't hear the uproar about those, however.) But man, were media newsholes up in arms about them! People threatening to do...uh, something (probably loudly). I don't know. All I know is that I had to hear about it. Then I became aware of this which appeared in Vanity Fair on July 29, 2008. Just remember, it was 2008. Plenty of people hated him at the time. Behold!

Hey! How come I never heard any uproar about that?! Oh, that's right. For the reason I just mentioned. Plenty of people already hated him. No sense in getting in an uproar when something fits your narrative now, is there? So the point here is that the media will report things that it has decided will be inflammatory in the eyes of the viewer. They're not interested in doing their job, they're interested in ratings. You'll hear about it if they think you'll be outraged, otherwise, not so much.

I'm not quite sure how I ended up here with all of this. Oh, right! The signs. I love 'em. They're great. And kudos to the guys who are just having fun with the whole thing.

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