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Who are those people anyway?

The Source

Who are those people anyway? You see them on the evening news, view their pictures on the front page of the newspaper and occasionally you’ll bump into them in person. I’m fairly sure it’s the same crowd. Every time ex-Gov Rod Blaggo steps out of his car to enter the courthouse they’ll be standing there holding their signs of support. Maybe a dozen or so middle-aged housewife-ish looking ladies with an occasional child in tow, along with a scattering of what look like unemployed dock workers. I know we live in a big state with a wide variety of intellects and moralities, but come on now! Can there reasonably be a single sole in Illinois who actually believes a guy who appears to be the slimiest governor in our state’s history? And remember, for Governor Rod to be labeled slimiest in Illinois he had to beat out some tough competition. Still… you can bet that if Sir Rod steps out of his limo in between the courtroom and his hair appointment you’ll see what will be described as “a handful of supporters” there to cheer him on. Who in the heck are these people? The California chapter of PETA was protesting the mistreatment of dogs in several Los Angeles animal shelters. They claimed that the animals were kept in filthy pens and the dogs often died of starvation. Dog lover or not, that’s a pretty ugly thought. When CNN covered the protest, there they were: a group protesting the PETA protesters. I guess they were folks who enjoyed cruelty to animals. Perhaps the most heinous little knots of people are those who’ve shown up at military funerals to protest the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. No matter your politics, that’s pretty low. My theory? They’re the same group who cheer for Governor Rod when he’s in front of a camera. I think someone has started a Rent-A-Crowd business. Somebody in Skokie or Peoria or San Francisco has come upon the idea of renting “a small crowd of supporters” or “a gathering of protestors” and renting out their services for any cause needing a good photo op. I think I’ve met some of these people. Every year when Arenzville blocks of its town park and sets up the burgoo kettles, there’ll be two or three carloads of people who will drag their lawn chairs to right in front of the stage for a night of free entertainment. They’re like ghosts in the night. No one knows who they are and once the show is done they disappear like…well, like “a handful of supporters.” I’m not begrudging anyone his right to earn a living and I suppose it’s a natural high to see your face on the news every night. A kid who lived across from me in Illinois College’s Gardner Hall once hopped on a Springfield-bound bus to protest Senator Eugene McCarthy’s appearance. I knew that McCarthy was a dove on the issue of Viet Nam and this kid was the ultimate flower child. I asked him why he’d take part in a protest that went against his political convictions. His answer was simple, “They promised us lunch.” And if Governor Rod can be out-scoundrel-ed, the shyster Bernie Madoff takes the prize by stealing billions of dollars from thousands of investors, yet when Madoff made his first court appearance, there they were. A small handful of supporters. Supporting what? Theft? The comedian W.C. Fields said he worked one season as a “Scream and Shout Artist.” Fields said he traveled with a small carnival across the Midwest and was hired to play the games on the carnival midway….knocking over the milk bottles with a soft ball, shooting the cork guns at the kewpie dolls, and tossing rings onto the prize pegs. The carnies would rig it so Fields would win it’d then be his job to go into excited convulsions of joy, scream, shout, hold his prize in the air, and thus draw a crowd of eager participants. The comic said he never got to keep any of the prizes but he was paid “fifty cents a day and all the beer I could drink.” Fields turned his summer job into a career of both entertaining and drinking, so perhaps there’s some sort of future in picking up a college major as SCS (Small Crowd Supporter.) Perhaps I shouldn’t knock it. There are mornings when I awake and consider what must be accomplished before the sun sets, when it seems like the rest of the world just isn’t pulling its load. I wonder what it would cost me to hire just a small crowd of supporters to cheer me when I walk out my front door.