Metairie Conservatives Celebrate Rather's Departure

By Spicolli'

Published March 10, 2005 09:34 AM

In a rare instance of Republican street theater, local conservatives followed a brass band around a war memorial in a busy median in Metairie, Louisiana holding umbrellas aloft in an imitation of a jazz funeral to celebrate Dan Rather's last broadcast as the anchorman of CBS Evening News.

That the seemingly triumphant Republicans are resorting to futile symbolic gestures is being greeted with a mixture of resentment and hope by local progressives. "I can't believe they're so brazenly ripping off our ideas." said Al Girbeaux a local labor activist. "It like only yesterday, we were holding a jazz funeral for democracy. These guys need to come up with their own material, maybe a Kool-aid giveaway..."

Other activists have become more optimistic from this event. "I've been going to protests for over 20 years the only thing the decline of the quality of American life has brought about is to make protests more elaborate." Says environmental activist Rainbow Rosen. "That conservatives are staging these spectacles can only showcase the more rabid elements of their movement. People dancing around a war memorial to celebrate the resignation of a man for pointing out that Bush was AWOL? C'mon that's worse than all those pierced folks with the purple hair that seem to be the only thing photographers see at our events. "