One key point missed in all the veggie chucking is that it's traditionally something done by everyday people to (economic) Royalists.
"Just Plain Folks" don't get pelted by produce: the overly privileged divorced from the lives of the everyday do.
THAT is why it strikes such a chord: it resonates the truth.
So you would be cool if someone decided to pelt Michelle Obama with rotten tomatoes? I don't think so. You can't make a post like this and then decry how mean and vicious the other side is being politically. When behavior like this just adds fuel to the fire.
In the 1800s, an unappreciative Cincinnati theater-goer protested the performance of actor William Macready by throwing a sheep carcass onstage.
Macready was a British performer who angered Americans by writing things like,"[American] masses, rich and poor, are essentially ignorant or vulgar, utterly deficient in taste."
@Novaload: Palin is too easy, she really is a fool. I wonder how commenters would react if Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Charles Rangel or Barney Frank got pelted. Maybe everybody who disagrees with a politician should just start throwing food at them? I'm down with that.
In Defense of Throwing Tomatoes at Sarah Palin? How about: In Defense of Nominating Sarah Palin as the GOP Presidential Candidate! That would be a win-win, because she would most likely lose, but if she didn't America would deserve her as president.
As much as I realize that Sarah Palin simply isn't qualified to be president and the thought of her in the Oval terrifies me...it most certainly is not "cool" that someone threw tomatoes at her. Just like it wouldn't be cool if someone threw tomatoes at our guy. Let's be grown ups about this.
Here's a better idea. Throw facts and logic at Sarah Palin. Those obviously do more to her than fruit ever could.
Incidentally, we should mention that we endorse that tomato-throwing guy if and only if he was chucking very soft, overripe tomatoes which would splatter readily and harmlessly all over Ms. Palin and drip down into her clothes while she was trying to sign books. Also, the tomatoes should have been organic and fair trade!
And right to the face from two stories above, right Adrian?
Right.
Out of curiosity: since the tomato hit a police officer, and, say, that police officer, thinking he was being attacked, I don't know, then drew his weapon and then, oh bother, fired his gun into the crowd, would it still be funny then?
On the one hand, I agree on some level with the comment Aaron Altman left on the other post, but on the other, it's not a tarring and feathering or a tasering. It was a tomato. I think the outrage about your post was a little excessive.
No, you're wrong. Throwing tomatoes at politicians approaches the same level of disrespect we see in TeaBaggers at their hate rallies and the racist email we see from a handful of Republicans. Attacking Palin's stupidity, her publicity whoring, her secessionist husband's politics, her lying, her attachment to conspiracy theory and her overall classlessness -- via words -- is a-okay. Throwing shit is bush league.
@royb2000: The Teabaggers are an organized "movement", whereas in this case we're dealing with a lone tomato-man. I think this is an important distinction. In the former we're dealing a group of gullible people easily manipulated into thinking they're making some sort of statement, in the latter we're talking about one person's solo political statement. Because there's only one of him, we can admire the tomato-man's moxie, without endorsing his technique.
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"Just Plain Folks" don't get pelted by produce: the overly privileged divorced from the lives of the everyday do.
THAT is why it strikes such a chord: it resonates the truth.
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Macready was a British performer who angered Americans by writing things like,"[American] masses, rich and poor, are essentially ignorant or vulgar, utterly deficient in taste."
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[www.rferl.org]
So don't dignify the idiot by throwing food at her.
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Here's a better idea. Throw facts and logic at Sarah Palin. Those obviously do more to her than fruit ever could.
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And right to the face from two stories above, right Adrian?
Right.
Out of curiosity: since the tomato hit a police officer, and, say, that police officer, thinking he was being attacked, I don't know, then drew his weapon and then, oh bother, fired his gun into the crowd, would it still be funny then?
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Not to be a fruit-n'-vegetable nerd, but I hope he was sufficiently figurative as to have thrown the appropriate variety, the Balconi Red.*
*I am not making this up.
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