Protest After-Math

The reality that the protests yesterday didn't draw as many persons as the Utah Democrat Party had hoped is beginning to sink in. Sympathetic members of the Salt Lake City MainStreamMedia tried desperately today to inflate the number of attendees. The trouble is, they sometimes contradicted each other, while writing such transparent propaganda that it would make even the party faithful wince when they read it.

As usual, leading the charge are the Democrat's eager helpers at the Tribune. Yesterday's estimate of "between 1,000 and 2,000" persons has been inflated to "about 2,000" protestors. The story's writer doesn't even attempt to pretend to be unbiased; the first paragraphs are brimfull of wishful thinking:

A confrontation in front of the Salt Palace Convention Center Monday between pro-Bush veterans and war protesters started out with jeers and competing chants, only to end with both groups singing "God Bless America."

The incident, in the conservative bastion of Utah, supported activists' claim that a new and stronger anti-Iraq war movement has begun. This peace movement has made patriotism, flag-waving and support for the troops part of its rhetoric.

Oh, please. The only thing this whole protest fiasco supported was the largely accurate stereotype of the Democrat Party's complete fecklessness on national security issues.

Ever the optimist, Trib columnist Holly Mullen is full of revolutionary fire. Her column today is reminiscent of a Pravda article extolling the socialist virtues of rationing. The title, "Hardy Protestors Bash Bush" begins with a description of the humidity. Yeah, it was humid, but I'm sure that most Warren readers living east of the Mississippi would gladly "endure" an hour of temperatures of 85 degrees with only about 50 percent humidity.

Mullen is just getting warmed up; the to-the-barracades rhetoric flows throughout her column. Dig this paragraph:

It was a noble effort, with roots planted right here in the soil of our own little red state. Perhaps in a lone paragraph of a history text someday, it will be noted that right alongside grieving military mom Cindy Sheehan camping out in Crawford, Texas, the people of Utah did their part in lighting the fire to end the war in Iraq.

Oh, come on. This is the type of drivel I would expect the wife of a prominent Democrat Party official to write, not the analysis of an impartial journalist (Oh wait, she is married to Ted Wilson, isn't she? My bad).

Not surprisingly, Mullen has no grasp of history. In this paragraph

Yet we are mired in a mess that keeps getting compared to Vietnam, but can't possibly end as that war did. The "secret plan" to end the war that Richard Nixon promised in his 1972 re-election campaign consisted of sending helicopters the following year to pluck Americans from the embassy roof in Saigon.

she reveals her stunning ignorance of events that she is old enough to have witnessed herself.

We didn't run from Viet Nam, we signed a peace treaty in early 1973 and withdrew our troops in an orderly manner over several months' time. The South Viet Nam we left was a stable, albeit imperfect, democracy. It wasn't until the Democrat-controlled Congress, taking advantage of President Nixon's resignation, cut off all military aid to the Vietnamese that the Communist North was able to overrun the democratic South. The helicopter Ms. Mullen referred to was evacuating embassy staff in April, 1975, nearly three years after President Nixon's re-election.

I don't mean to be insulting, but this woman is just flat-out dumb. Rich-blonde-high-school-cheerleader dumb. Her continuing presence on the Tribune's staff is either due to sympathy or her considerable political connections.

In an effort to be cool, the Deseret News tries to help out with the numbers but ends up actually undercutting the Tribune. According to their story the protest drew "more than 1,000", but at least the writer attempted to be unbiased and included some contrasting points of view.

However, he was undercut by DesNews columnist Doug Robinson, who apparently did not get the "support the Trib" memo and calls the protest exactly what it was: A bunch of hippie re-treads and their college-age wannabees trying to re-live the '60's. Robinson skeptically estimated the crowd at "1,000... tops" and definitely was not impressed by what he saw.

I agree. I was there, and there is no way that the crowd topped 500. In my last post there is a photo of the main body of the crowd and it is about the size of a high school pep rally. This whole affair was a lame attempt to re-create a bygone era, and it failed miserably.

UPDATE: I think I might have been a bit too hard on poor Ms. Mullen. I keep forgetting that as an elite member of the MainStreamMedia, she has editors who are supposed to check her work for errors. If I had been editing a draft of her column (a virtual impossibility, as the Tribune would never hire a conservative white Mormon male for such a sensitive position) I would have made her correct or omit the paragraph about Viet Nam. The fact that her editors allowed such a gross distortion of history to be printed means they didn't think anything was wrong with what she wrote, either.

In addition, I will continue to point out her marriage to Ted Wilson, the former Democrat Mayor of Salt Lake City, whose daughter, if I remember correctly, is currently an elected official in Salt Lake County. It is an excellent example of the cozy relationship that is shared by the Democrat Party and the MSM.

Indeed, the paragraph I pointed out above neatly illustrates the Left's pet delusions about Viet Nam. Holly repeated the myth that our troops were chased out of Viet Nam with their tails between their legs because that's how every liberal remembers it. Their continuing efforts to repeat the experience of the '60's suggests they like the idea of America losing.

I don't, which is why I will continue to call them on it whenever they bring it up.