We've gotten several emails requesting video of Moriah Arnold speaking at the rally yesterday. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find any footage of it. If any C&Ler does have additional footage of the rally, especially of Moriah speaking, please let us know.
Newsweek does offer coverage of the rally here, including a mention of Moriah. But as is typical, they focus more attention on Jane Fonda's attendance than anything else. You can launch NBC's report on the rally here.
Protesters energized by fresh congressional skepticism about the Iraq war demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops in a demonstration Saturday that drew tens of thousands and brought Jane Fonda back to the streets.
A sampling of celebrities, a half-dozen members of Congress and busloads of demonstrators from distant states joined in a spirited rally under a sunny sky, seeing opportunity to press their cause in a country that has turned against the war.
The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, threatened to use congressional spending power to try to stop the war. "George Bush has a habit of firing military leaders who tell him the Iraq war is failing," he said, looking out at the masses. "He can't fire you." Referring to Congress, the Michigan Democrat added: "He can't fire us."
Here's my problem with the coverage given to the protest so far: not ONE has failed to mention Jane Fonda. Now don't get me wrong, Fonda's a good actress and a committed liberal. I have no personal problem with her or her right to participate in protests. I think her actions during Vietnam have been mythologized by the right wing noise machine into being worse than they empirically were, but she did take responsibility for them and apologized for the perceived insensitivity. But we all know that the media downplays and marginalizes protests as a matter of course. As much as I dislike the lumping together of the media as some monolithic entity, their focus on Fonda makes me think that media coverage is being directed by the SwiftBoat Veterans. The MAJORITY of Americans do not support either Bush's escalation or the war itself. Why the need to marginalize it by the thinly veiled allusions to Hanoi Jane?
