Protest Dispersed at Obama Transition Headquarters

Ken Bazinet of the NY Daily News is one of the Obama Transition pool reporters who has shown a flair for keeping the "just-the-facts" chronologies pretty interesting, and he gave us some good stuff today: (via email)

While your pool was waiting in the motorcade for departure, about two dozen people in orange jump suits with black hoods over their heads and most with their hands tied behind their backs, gathered outside Transition HQ demanding that the terror prison at GITMO be shut down. They displayed a banner with a picture of the White House on it that read, "Close Guantanamo." A few also held smaller individual signs that said, "Shut down Guantanamo."

Your pooler was told the group has demonstrated outside President-elect Obama's HQ the past few days. Police, who arrived in eight vehicles, asked the group to move along and they slowly marched off single file, hands behind their backs looking like dejected vision-impaired sanitation workers (except their jumpsuits were pretty darn clean). Upon departure, we observed the relocated protesters about a block away from Transition HQ.

I think that gets the award for Funniest Pool Report, and I hesitate to even try to improve on it.

Aside from Ken's description, which could have only been improved by counter-protesters sticking feathers in their faces, I find it hilarious that, just this past Sunday, Obama said he was going to close Gitmo, and these guys immedately run to demand that he close Gitmo. They're like that Penelope character on Saturday Night Live, who tops everything anyone does. "I'm about hope and change, in fact I'm made of change, my head is dimes and my toreo is buffalo nickels..."

Don't get me wrong, I'm as rebellious as the next guy, but the typical modern protester, from what I've seen, amounts to an attention-seeking poseur. Caleb and I ran into a lot of them in Denver, where I taught them a lesson by out-attention-whoring them. We also got a hilarious glimpse of the near-empty "free speech" pen at the Pepsi Center, where one young joker took the mic to denounce the free speech pen, followed minutes later by another young man disavowing that position.

To be fair, we also ran into a group of courageous, young counter-protesters who came to lawfully disrupt the hateful Westboro Baptist Church clan. That's the kind of protest anyone can get behind.

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