The world famous (or at least banned from Canada and the UK) Westboro Baptist Traveling Circus visited Louisville yesterday to perform their classic song and dance routine.
Well before the time of their first performance (they had five scheduled for the day) a crowd had begun to gather to greet them. Some superfans had even driven in from Ohio just for their visit.
With all the hype and media attention they've garnered over the years I definitely had some expectations for finally seeing them in person. The reality of that proved to be nothing like what I had expected them to be.
They were . . . boring. Their entire performance consisted of three senior citizens and one of their middle-aged children parading back and forth along a piece of sidewalk carrying signs and intermittently singing indecipherable songs. Forty-five minutes of this tired attempt at trolling, then back in the bag go the signs and away they go to the next performance.
For reasons that are clear as mud, they were on a school tour, performing outside two local high schools, the Southern Baptist Seminary, and the School of Law and School of Medicine at University of Louisville.
The performance at the seminary seemed like a family dispute so I gave it a pass but I caught the other four shows. Couldn't shake the feeling that what I was witnessing was just some grown up goody two-shoes trying to antagonize someone, anyone, into doing something stupid so that they can then run and tattle.
Their fans seemed to realize this and rather than take the bait, acted more as a counterpoint and buffer. What's this world coming to, when the Young Commies gotta remind you to love thy neighbor?
Well, except this guy, he was there to make sure they knew how much he loved them. Just in case the shirt didn't do the trick he brought a boombox so that George Carlin and Rage Against The Machine could tell them so as well.
It was all a bit surreal, for all the attention Westboro has received over the years their performance was nothing compared to the local clowns that regularly perform outside Prides and abortion clinics around here. Never thought I'd be calling Westboro Baptist tame but they lacked much of the meanness and menace that as a clinic escort I witnessed every week from their local imitators.
Adding to the sense of the surreal was the paradox of the day. On one hand, there's few real world situations where 'don't feed the trolls' is more applicable than this. On the other hand, you can't in good conscience let asshats run around spewing hate without doing something. What's you gonna do?
