The Dirt in Your Fries

My Friday night was ruined by the RNC. But the enduring irony* -- one that squares easily with my feelings about protests and demonstrations -- is that it might have been ruined, in equal parts, by protestors on wheels (the Critical Mass mass-bike protest) and the Republican Party and the police and media presence it entails.

*Irony because it would seem that any inconveniences could be blamed on the convention itself, when in fact, it is the response to the convention that was equally, if not more, disrupting-- even better, because I am more ideologically aligned with the response than the convention itself. This is irony, then, in the traditional sense, not the modern, broader definition that accommodates coincidental or abnormal instances.

"Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply “coincidental” or “improbable,” in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency."

The point is, most of us are quick to deride Alanis Morissette for misuing the word irony, but in fact, many people continue to use it for coincidental situations. Coincidences don't drive irony because coincidences are random. Irony is tension between two things between which there is some sort of relationship, usually an inverted one, but still, a linkage.

Anyway, back to the story. Earlier in the evening, we were puzzled by multiple helicopters patrolling the East Village, hovering low enough that their grating martial sound was disconcerting in itself, the question of why they were there unanswerable at that point because it was two days before the start of the convention, because the East Village didn't seem like an area that merited high security surveillance. We ignored it. It was when we were on St. Marks Place in an Afghani restaurant when, out the window, we saw about 50 police officers in full riot gear charging down the street (if only I had had a camera...) After we left the restaurant it was chaos everywhere, police and barricades on every corner, helicopters put-put-putting over out heads, that we concluded that a good time could not be had that night. And we turned in.

Both parties who made Friday night really really creepy are guilty of lazy metonymy: thinking that demonstrators are a representative of NY, the Democratic party, liberalism, etc., but also that police offers are a part of a larger "them" and thus, it's ok to throw rocks at them. In this way, I think I agree with old-fashioned idea that you skip the grafitti, the protesting, the protest songs: if you give a shit at al, you work hard, you work you ass off at getting into positions of power, and make change where it counts -- instead of throwing rocks at a cop's head.