The mainstream media in the past couple of week tried to stir up a little tsunami of disrespect for our mayor, Rocky Anderson. This is because he sandwiched in a speech at today’s anti-war protest on the Mall with a city business trip to Washington D.C.

The trip was taxpayer-funded, you see, and the thought that the Rock would take six minutes to shout out against the war would typically outrage scores of red-staters here in Utah. (Not so much though in Salt Lake City proper, where Rocky has majority support for most of his city programs and his national agenda, as well.)

The anticipated outrage was a no-show. The usual dump of letters to the editors in the local papers never happened. I admit I can’t possibly land on every blog out there that could have addressed Rocky’s ambition, motivation, patriotism and what his hair looked like (I watched him live on C-SPAN, and the hair looked good, I must say). But really, the storm over the mayor’s anti-war, anti-Bush conduct never erupted.

Some folks may have just given up on the guy. Rocky is Rocky, after all. He’s like the scones at Mom’s Cafe down south in Salina. You always know what you’re gonna get. He does what he does and as long as that big pothole on the I-80 on-ramp at 1300 East gets fixed this spring, why bitch?

But this is the more likely scenario: Rocky is right about this dismal and hopeless war. He’s been right all along. Even here in Utah, which supported Bush by 93 percent in the aftermath of September 11, the president’s approval rating is dipping. One recent poll shows 61 percent approval in Utah of the prez (It’s hovering near 30 percent nationwide).

Also, people in Utah love having our name somewhere, anywhere, in the national news. Few Utahns will admit this out loud. Culturally, that sort of self-promotion is considered unseemly, audacious, too showy. Unless, of course, you are Utah senior Sen. Orrin Hatch, out to sell a new CD of your Christian-lite music. In that case, a little self-aggrandizement on the taxpayer’s dime is OK.

Rocky is right, and so is the huge wave of people that won’t be cowed anymore into silence over this war. Today’s national headlines picked up on George W. Bush’s declaration that he is “the decision maker” in the move to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq. That, seemingly, is a step above “the decider” our president has been for the past several months. I dunno. It’s two more syllables. Does that make him more powerful?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates — remember him as the guy Washington’s leaders called a breath of fresh air after Donald Rumsfeld — raised that tired old specter of inciting the enemy with our protests.

That was in response to reporters’ questions following Bush’s brush-off of the congressional resolution (non-binding!) to condemn his troop “surge.”

“Any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to [the enemy],” Gates said.

I love that Rocky Anderson and all those other dissident voices rang out just hours after Bush, Gates et al tried to dilute them. The Administration’s mantra of “if yur not fur us yur agin us” might have worked at the start of this whole mess. It might have bullied some into submission, and chilled us into shoving our First Amendment rights into a drawer.

Not any more. Just watch.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under All, Politics, Community, Media, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.