9/12 protest in Washington

Seemed to be pretty big. [Link]

* Of the people I ended up talking to, the general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush's spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a "throw-all-the-bums-out" strategy. All but one did not care about Obama's birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.
* People had traveled from North Carolina, Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and Washington state.
* The view on Obama and his administration ranged from a "heading in the wrong direction" vibe to a "we're not gonna take it much longer" edge.

This is all, obviously, a partial and unscientific take, and not an attempt to encapsulate a huge event, but rather a faithful rendering of what I saw. With that caveat, I had a very hard time reconciling the human beings I talked to and observed with the caricatures described in pre-writes by the New York Times' Gail CollinsL.A. Times' Tim Rutten ("the talk-show/tea-party right...if it has its way–will convert the GOP into an almost exclusively white, zealously religious, mostly Southern party"), and Gawker's Alex Pareene

Political rallies are no place to seek the subtle truth, nor feel particularly glowing about your countrymen, and today was no different in that regard for me. But the meta-fact about a huge anti-Obamanomics protest eight months into his term is certainly significant, and very little of what I saw made me fear that Alex Pareene will be blown to smithereens by a suicide hijacker from Arkansas. I am confident, however, that I will soon be made to fear what I utterly failed to detect.

("The tea party movement activists range from geeky Ron Paulists who obsess about the money supply to conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country"), the ("Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America").

Political rallies are no place to seek the subtle truth, nor feel particularly glowing about your countrymen, and today was no different in that regard for me. But the meta-fact about a huge anti-Obamanomics protest eight months into his term is certainly significant, and very little of what I saw made me fear that Alex Pareene will be blown to smithereens by a suicide hijacker from Arkansas. I am confident, however, that I will soon be made to fear what I utterly failed to detect.