I wish I had written this amazing Hunter Thompson-esque article about DC war protests. Beautiful stuff.

Some excerpts:

After all, one would be hard-pressed to think of any circumstance not involving a pro-government counter-demonstration in which 40 journalists from major news organizations would attend a 9 a.m. weekend rally involving 80 illiterate morons. To use the Russian expression, crayfish will whistle in the mountains before 80 environmentalists in a park on a Saturday morning draw so much as a college radio intern, much less 40 of the country's heaviest press hitters. The mere presence of so much press at MOVE-OUT was monstrous.

So when I arrived at the scene I thought it would be amusing to count the total number of journalists, as opposed to actual protesters. And wouldncha know it, some members of the working press were offended by the exercise.

"You shouldn't be doing that now," a bearded Reuters hack told me, after suffering the indignity of being counted. "It's too early. The bulk of the crowd won't show up until later. Like around ten-thirty."

"Well," I said. "The Washington Post said this thing was supposed to start at nine. It's now nine-thirty."

"The Post was wrong," the Reuters man snapped. "If you want to be honest, you'll do this later."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You're actually worried that I'm going to undercount these yahoos?"

"I'm saying," he said, "that if you want to be fair, you'll count when the crowd really shows up."

Next to the Reuters man stood a young blonde woman in black horn-rimmed glasses who identified herself as a reporter for The New York Times. She didn't offer her name, but another reporter there later told me that she was an assistant to Times reporter Lynette Clemetson. She'd been listening to my exchange with the Reuters man and decided to chime in.

"And the important thing isn't the numbers," she said. "This demonstration has more Vietnam veterans."

I shook my head, stunned. "Are you kidding?" I said. "The other demonstration will have a hell of a lot more vets than this one, I'm sure of that."

She frowned. "No," she said. "That one's going to be mostly college students. Kids."

"Maybe so," I said. "But just in terms of sheer numbers.... I mean, even half a percent of 100,000 is going to be ten times more vets than we're seeing here. There are about fifty people here, for Christ's sake."

"No," she said, not convinced. "No, this one will have more."

A third personage, a scrawny redneck protester in a baseball cap and a Gore-Tex face guard, was listening in. "That's the slimiest journalism I've ever seen," he said, jumping in. "You're in here and you're going to count us before we're even here. You wait until ten-thirty, then you'll see how many of us there will be. You're yellow journalism scum."

"Settle down, Beavis," I said.

"You wait until ten-thirty, you liberal bastard," he said.

I shrugged and walked away. An hour later, after suffering through numerous historically confused speeches about our victories over fascists in France and our spectacular, as-yet-unrecognized military successes in Vietnam, I counted all over. The final tally, again, was 80 protesters and 40 journalists—and that included the five-man Guardian Angel security entourage that followed speaker Curtis Sliwa. I sought out Gore-Tex face in the crowd.

"Hey, Chester," I said. "Eighty to forty. Nice turnout."

"Fuck you," he hissed. "We represent the real America."

"You know," I said, "I once went to a Suzanne Somers book signing. There were like three hundred people there. It was a book of poetry."

"Fuck you," he repeated.

"Our troops have always been there for us," he said, "from the time of World War I, when our soldiers beat back the fascists in France...."

I turned to Paul. "France?" I said. "Fascists? What the fuck is he talking about?"

Paul shrugged. "Forget it," he said. "He's on a roll."

I turned around. Behind me there was a man in a mesh baseball hat and glasses listening with rapt attention to Martin and brandishing a lovingly hand-drawn sign that read, painfully, "DISARM SADAM." I moved over to him.

"You're missing a D," I said.

"What?" he said.

"'Saddam' is with two Ds," I said. "You're missing a D."

He looked down at his sign.

"Listen," he said. "I can spell it any ways I want. Faggot."