Across the Pond: Finding humor in a mob

It's nearly finals time over here at NUI Galway so I decided to go to an extra bonus lecture that was going on at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. The professor apologized for cutting into our social times and proceeded to give a rousing lecture on the rise of the British Labour Party.

I was supposed to meet up with the International Students' Society at the local bowling alley. I was flat broke so I needed to go to campus bank and get some money out of the friendly ATM.

So I walk into the lobby and I fall over laughing. Just outside the bank is a group of about 25 protestors holding Palestinian flags, Iranian flags and signs that read "Thomas C. Foley is a War Criminal."

Foley is the U. S. Ambassador to Ireland and received the post in October of 2006. It was a real patronage post. Foley was a major political fundraiser for George W. Bush in Connecticut during the 2000 Election. He got himself on some economic committee that took care of Iraqi state-owned industries in the post-invasion chaos of 2003 and now he got rewarded with an easy ambassadorship.
He was speaking at a lecture theater on the NUI Galway campus to discuss US foreign policy. Naturally, the protestors showed up for a warm greeting.

There were multiple Palestinian flags, a giant Iranian flag and more banners than I've ever seen in one place at one time. Shockingly, there were only about three protestors there to protest Iraq. The others were holding signs trashing US foreign policy in some forsaken corner of the world from Oaxaca to the Chagos Islands to the alleged mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. There was even a guy dressed as a prisoner in orange overalls.

I worked my way through the crowd to the ATM. In one corner was a platoon of police officers and one campus security guard looking rather bemused. In the other corner was my professor and a student from England having a laugh about the whole thing.

I tried my best to ignore the whole protest. It's not very often I listen to the government, but some of those trustafarians get unhinged when an American accent is nearby. So I decided to talk to the English guy, since I figured we were probably the two least popular people in the building at the time.

After about 10 minutes of nothing happening other than the crowd milling about and largely socializing with each other, the English guy looked dejected. "I gave up a lift home for this." He sulked away.

It was about this time I noticed an American flag in the corner. Well, it was an American flag at one point in its life. At least before someone replaced the stars with skulls and the red stripes with missiles and bombs.

The platoon of police spread throughout the lobby and the officers were looking quite relaxed. I took this moment in time to start asking questions to one of the officers. At first it was small talk and then the officer opened up.

I asked the officer about the protestors, "Was Ambassador Foley really dumb enough to walk through this crowd?"

"No, he went in through the back door."

I took a quick look at the where the back door was. Sure enough, there were a couple of bemused security officers and a few nervous bureaucrats in nice suits with American flag pins. There were no protestors back there. The nearest group of protestors was a group of feminists who looked downright timid and were standing far away from just about everyone.

So I said to the officer, "I'm guessing these protestors haven't realized that the ambassador isn't going to walk out the front door."

The officer smiled. "Some of the protestors are inside. But I have no idea what the others are waiting for." He nodded towards the other dozen or so officers in the lobby and outside on the steps. "We're the decoy unit."

I started laughing and said, "I'm guessing the protestors haven't figured that out yet."

The police officer said nothing but had a smile that involved the use of every muscle in his face.

French writer Antoine de Rivarol once stated, "It has been very truly said that the mob has many heads, but no brains." Apparently this applies no matter how well intentioned the mob is.