The Confederacy Is Present

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Carhartt product placement? image: @catblackfrazier
Talking Points Memo calls it “Rage & Performance Art,” which is complicated only if you let it.
Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and former half-term governor and Fox News personality Sarah Palin headlined a protest at the WWII Memorial today. They were decrying the memorial’s closure as a result of the government shutdown. The shutdown they orchestrated and perpetuate. Personally.
The protestors, Tea Party Republicans and truckers, siezed the barricades and marched them up 17th Street to the White House, where they waved a Confederate flag and demanded President Obama come out with his hands up.
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image: @davidfrum
On a process note, it’s interesting that where Sforzian moments were once centrally conceived for and executed by professional photojournalists, nowadays photo-op political stunt events are disseminated through amateur snapshots.
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One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is Karl Rove’s Sforzian dictum that you should be able to get the message even if you have the TV sound turned off. And I think that comes across loud and clear.
As in this photo from [decidedly non-amateur, non-bystander] Texas Republican congressman Steve Stockman, which includes a flag behind Palin that cites John Locke’s “appeal to heaven” to call for revolution against the government. [via andrewsullivan.com]