David Blaska
I will say this for the Take Back the Land people: they know how to play the news media.
These are the home invaders who re-enact the scene in Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago where Bolsheviks take over the home of Yuri because they "need" it. This time, they did not ensconce a previously housed woman in a foreclosed home as they did, briefly, last week. Perhaps that woman had enough embarrassment for one month and no one similarly foolish could be found on short notice. (Is Progressive Dane on vacation?)
On a lovely mid-afternoon Monday in May, about two dozen of their troupe rendezvoused with an almost equal number of the scribblers and talking heads at Aldo Leopold Park. They kept the journalists waiting a good half hour waiting for Leftist stragglers.
Then they marched like locusts a block or so to the duplex at 2918-20 Turbot Drive just off S. Fish Hatchery Road, a For Sale sign in its front yard. The property was said to be empty since last July and in the hands of the incompetent federal agency, Freddie Mac.
The Take Back the Land people paraded about eight people, I think, in front of the microphone set up on the front lawn while the news hounds shifted their weight from one foot to the other. The actors described how highly developed were their consciousnesses, how virtuous their characters, how noble their motives, how refined their politics. It was clear this was a vanity project.
In the march to the property and in between speakers it was mandated that the neo-bolsheviks recite various chants, some of them rhyming, some not. These were led by a leather-lung named Rev. Chris Long. He wore a colorful African kofia on his dome.
"People over profits," was one sentiment expressed, as if the concept is known to the lower chordata. "Stop the racial profiling," was another. When had it begun? Sure enough, the Rev. Leatherlung likened this crusade to the civil rights struggles a half-century ago. Dr. M.L. King's heirs should sue on the basis of erroneous equivalency.
Blaska's Third Law of Protests: the ratio of chanting to actual thought is entirely inverse.
I tried to start up a chant of my own among the journalists and (in my case) former journalists (as Bill Lueders describes me): "You're stupid and it's not our fault."
The neighborhood association president at Darbo-Worthington informed the news media that she did not have the answer but maybe this was it. Which goes some way towards explaining why her neighborhood is as troubled as it is. Yes, send more non-workers into the neighborhood! Let them live free without paying rent. Whoever has the muscle can break into the nicest place. Yeah, maybe that will improve things!
We did not hear from Mr. Z! Haukeness, so prominent in last week's squatter event. This time he was relegated to the foot soldier ranks holding the "Housing is a Human Right" banner. TV loves visuals.
The plump lady of color who acted as emcee then invited the news sniffers into the house. A TV man properly declined, as that would be trespass.
Your correspondent looked back across the street at Madison Police Captain Joe Balles and two of his uniformed finest, with the silent prayer that now would be a propitious time to make their charge. Certainly, housing for the dirty two dozen could be found at a secure location in downtown Madison, perhaps on Doty Street next to the courthouse.
Alas, Captain Balles kept the cell phone mashed on his ear on the opposite sidewalk and did not give the order to counter-attack. Meanwhile, a worker -- remember those people? -- complained to one uniform about the amplified chanting. He worked the night shift and was trying to get some sleep this afternoon. He received no satisfaction.
The Takers made a big show of planting a few flowers in the front yard and wiping the inside of the windows to the click and whirr of cameras. Kabuki theater of the Left.
When at last questions were permitted it had been my intention to ask if any of the Takers had any concept of creating value, perhaps having a chance encounter with economics as taught outside of Radfest. But I had been surfeited with their theatrics and could take no more.
Visitors to the Stately Manor can attest that the squire patterns his life according to Ms. Lynn Fontanne dictum: "We can be bought but we cannot be bored."
The squire left the scene of the crime in a small red sports car, top down, tires chirping, tunes up.
He submits this report for your approval.
