Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

One of the first rules of organizing a good protest is that for it to be really effective, you need to attract media coverage. Print press is good, but to really reach a mass audience with your message, you've got to get TV cameras there.

So, what happens if the clever angle to your protest also happens to make it ... well, let's say, "challenging" to put it on television without offending the viewer? Well, yesterday, in Calgary, that's just what happened when anti-G8 activists bared all in "cheeky protest."

I would have loved seeing it on the news, but I suspect most networks and independent stations opted out of showing a couple of dozen protesters standing naked in front of the Gap, with "boycott Gap" written across their asses (one letter per cheek), shouting, "I'd rather wear nothing than wear The Gap."

In fact, not only do I think it would have been great on the news, but I think the Gap should use the footage themselves for a new ad campaign - "They'd rather go naked, if they can't wear the Gap!"

The action, by the way, was to protest the Gap's use [abuse] of cheap, foreign labor (true) and their destruction of a redwood forest in California (not so sure about the details on that one).

Meanwhile, from the world of literature: 'World's Worst Poet' Wins Immortality.