If you can fake authenticity you have it made

I’m embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that they would do that. It’s obvious in retrospect, though — professionals can make much more amateur-looking signs than amateurs, who might accidentally make them look too good.

Although it does make me wonder about the infamous “morans” sign and others like it. It’s often said that the American right revels in ignorance and stupidity, but would they go so far as to deliberately misspell their own signs and expose themselves to ridicule? (Oh, wait. They also revel in persecution. Of course they would. Faking stupidity is a great way to get some elitist egghead worked up about how stupid you are.)

3 in response to 1 of course…

One should read the column to which the blog entry refers- it’s a piece of work. It’s an exercise in what one might call reverse Schadenfreude- a right-wing Brit, jealous that Germany with its “social market model” has ridden out the global crisis so much more effectively than his own country and his beloved Thatcherism-Blairism, is reduced to thumbing his nose and saying saying “nyah-nyah, it all MIGHT fall apart tomorrow.”

@6 – Well, it is The Economist so the column’s outlook as you describe it isn’t too surprising.
But the quoted passage is great, esp the munchkins line. (One of the definitions of that word being “a person who keeps busy doing things that are often unimportant, unnecessary, or annoying.” Webster’s New World)

“They polished these techniques abroad”

During the recent demonstrations in Tehran, I kept wondering about similarities with previous stage-managed protests in Iran in 1953.

Didn’t Alexandra Pelosi show this in Journeys with George? Not that it gets less distasteful with time. The part I have the most trouble with is not that the Bushies insisted on making signs, but that the vanguard party of ‘real America’ leading the charge against those snobby pointy-headed elitists Gore and Kerry didn’t trust their own f*cking hand-picked audiences to bring their own signs as well.

What I find especially frustrating is that this kind of game isn’t possible without the collusion of the press. Surely if an Economist reporter knows about it, all the reporters know about it. But we’re getting that report now, in 2009, more than five years after the last Bush campaign rally. All of the TV news reports showed people waving signs that the reporters must have known were faked, instead of pictures of campaign operatives manufacturing them. The real story just didn’t make it into the reporting.

Presumably the press colludes in this sort of thing because the press and the campaign operatives have the common goal of getting good pictures.

Nevermind the column itsself. In extend to what you would general expect from the economist, this one also seems consider everything bad when its not done exactly as in the UK. Now if something might be German or French its also per definition bad since he considers the EU some kind of geopolitical power game arena with France and Germany being the main rivals for his beloved UK.

I wonder about the DC tea party signs. Some seem too poorly thought through to be systematic (e.g. note the embrace of pro-choice slogans as an argument against healthcare reform). But then again, there seems to be systematic clowning at work.

here are the regular people, here are the unschooled and heartfelt signs: what more is necessary? sorry, you don’t have a VIP pass–no backstage access….it’s not so much that the media need to have an “ideological” bias; the media has a bias in favor of cynicism, deception, insiderhood. they like the spectacle; they respect those who can use it effectively. individual journalists may have commitments to truth, objectivity, exposing corruption, etc–but these commitments have very little to do with how the mass media, especially TV news, actually works….

The heterogeneity of liberal signage is its own reality check. If the people next to you are proclaiming “Latinos for the Metric System” or “Menopausal Matriarchs of Mendocino for Peace” then you are almost certainly marching up Market Street in San Francisco. There will be giant puppets and an assortment of musicians.

The heterogeneity of liberal signage is its own reality check.

Aren’t we forgetting our dear colleague Diego Gambetta here? By accepting the fake sign, you’re demonstrating that you don’t particularly care which sign you wave. If you weren’t a real Republican, you’d be outraged by the fakery and the censorship, and would be exposed. Mindless obedience and tolerance of kitsch are properties they have in relative abundance, so they require a display of them as identification. It’s a signalling protocol helping people high on the social authoritarianism index to find each other and to exclude possible infiltrators.

Well, expect that Democrats do the same Alex :-). For sure they also confiscate private signs. Heck, that was well reported here – in Germany.

Maybe one reason for confiscating banners is to avoid this kind of thing…

Sometimes the organizers provide the signs, sometimes people bring their own. Union ralies in the US are known for providing the signs, chants, and press talking points each protester is meant to learn. To me this speaks more to being highly organized and on message. The legitamacy of the event is only questionable when the people showing up are paid to be there.