PROTEST FATIGUE

  

Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to protest Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Puh-leez, Mr. Netanyahu! I’ve seen better artwork on the fridges of doting grandparents.

 

You’ve heard about donor fatigue? I’m suffering from protest fatigue. It’s very sad, but the entertainment value has gone out of demonstrations.  I thought we had hit rock bottom with the Occupy Movement. I mean how many days in a row can you watch tent city and talking heads? I want something more exciting than a guy doing line drawings with a red marker. Something more dramatic than Olympic fencer Shin-Lam doing a sit-down to protest a referee’s decision. Something more gripping than a bevy of overweight public servants walking in circles with hand-written cardboard signs. I nodded off reading the signs. Sorry. What were they protesting? Discrimination against persons of belly fat?

 If you ask me, Nick Wallenda, the guy who did the tight-rope walk across Niagara Falls, missed out on a great chance to protest something, like wasting water on gawking tourists instead of bottling it and selling it to pay down the province’s deficit. I mean he had people hooked. So, Mr. Netanyahu, next time, I suggest, you bungie-jump for peace. Or you do a nude hot-tub protest, preferably with people who have ogle-worthy bodies. My personal beef is the monopoly of the Ontario Liquour Board over alcoholic beverages. I’m thinking of organizing a drink-in, something involving a conga weave down Yonge Street with circle-puking and slurred-word shoutouts. I bet you I could get Aspirin to sponsor it.  I can see the banners now: ASPIRIN THE LEADING CURE FOR HANGOVER.

 A few years ago someone in Australia started the idea of Movember, a moustache growing charity event. Is that gender-biased, or what? I mean except for your Russian cleaning woman, what female can grow a competitive moustache? I suggest something more gender-balanced, like growing your toenails to promote a cure against blue nail polish or growing warts to protest Rowling’s new novel, or in the spirit of science, growing your own liver from stem cells to protest genetically modified crops. For instructions on how to place the clusters of stem cells on a piece of porous biodegradable plastic, check out Henry Fountain’s article in the NY Times. On second thought, maybe that’s a tad too slow to garner attention.

 Generally speaking, I’m tired of virtuous people plugging for humanity. I think we should all get together and promote reckless driving, over-the-top spending, serial adultery, numbing or deadly drug mixology, lying politicians and mindless twittering (oh, right, that’s been done), and pretty soon all the world's problems will go away. Many would-be do-gooders will be dead, unconscious, or too busy to notice those around them. And let’s face it that the source of most problems: we are paying too much attention to other people. Bring on the total tech-age and leave me alone with my i-devices, and in no time you’ll see: It’s a beautiful world.