Opposing RNC 2008: Crowd Control Among The Crowd Controllers

Photo by John Hoff

There's one in every crowd, even when it's a group of would-be crowd controllers. Here's a picture of the guy I blogged about earlier, who thinks everything--the marshal training, the protests at RNC 2008, the question-and-answer session--is all about his desperate psychological need to be heard at length by a group of peers...


Right before the question-and-answer session, the person at the front of the room said to be sure these were QUESTIONS and not SPEECHES or STATEMENTS. And furthermore, she would be calling on the people who had NOT ALREADY ASKED A QUESTION. A small, knowing titter of laughter came from the crowd.

You could tell why these things were being said. Well, most people could, anyway. A bore is a bore because he doesn't know he's a bore, after all.

As one might expect, the instructions about the question-and-answer session didn't stop Attention Needing Man from pushing up his hand right away. WAY UP. And actually thrusting himself off his chair, like his hand was a rocket ship and he was following it out into spaaaaaaaaace.

When he figured out the speaker wasn't looking in his direction he moved to the left side of the room (the speaker's right side) so he could be over in THAT corner, and put up his hand, again.

He'd take the hand down when somebody else asked a question, then he'd put it up when the answer to the question seemed to be wrapping up. He was quick to misjudge when something was "wrapping up," so the raised hand went up--quickly down--slowly up, like a fiddle head fern uncurling itself. Oops. Wrong moment. Back down again.

Here he is doing that. Note the hand.

Sigh. I think the crowd control people are going to do a fine job...well, I should say, 99 percent of them.

If they were intent on being 100 percent tactically effective, there would be a minor purging of the ranks IMMEDIATELY.

I'm sure the Republicans have their own excruciating, vicariously-embarassing moments like this.

Good heavens, I hope so, or all is lost.