Iraq

Poor old Comrade Chretien

This is fun – a post on the official Galloway Mercedes Tour Blog from GG’s pimp Todd Chretien who seems rather taken aback that some of the ‘other side’ turned out:

Despite the fact that we had to make them stand in the heat and humidity to get them though the metal detectors that our insurance policy required, the vast majority of the crowd was good-natured, patient and helpful.

However, there were a noticeable number of belligerent patrons, most of them white men, quite a few of them smelling of happy hour. I had assumed that only a few of Hitchens fans would attend, so I didn’t necessarily put two-and-two together at the time.

Tut, tut, white men who drink? Whatever next. Anyway it gets worse as the wonderfully named Comrade Chretien (where do they get them from?) tells us:

As Hitchens and Galloway emerged from the wings, the crowd applauded for their favorites. Much to my surprise, almost one-third of the audience was boisterously on the side of the polemicist from Vanity Fair.

…..His partisans in the audience hooted and yelled their approval. Watching them stamp their feet and howl, it dawned on me that my assumptions about Hitchens’ fans were all wrong.

Rather than the declining ex-liberals, grown comfortable on the fat of successful careers and embarrassed by a flirtation with a few radical principles in their long past youth, that I had imagined, they were almost all white men in their 20’s or 30’s. Most of them were much better dressed than Hitchens himself, and they unapologetically reveled in Hitchens sexual and sexist innuendo.

I must have missed all the sexy stuff Hitchens was doing – was it censored by Democracy Now or something?

Anyway, much more importantly, Galloway is discovering that just as American political audiences aren’t as uniform as those Saddam used to provide him with, American journalists aren’t as ‘on-message’ as the Syrian state news agency.

Its not just the usual suspects who have objected to having a pro-jihadi, friend of Saddam hawking his rehashed books around their meeting halls but a couple of the best known anti-war columnists have also gone out of their way to point out a few home truths about Galloway.

David’s already told you about Greg Palast and now Marc Cooper (who to be fair has always been on the decent anti-war left) also tells his readers about exactly who they are being asked to give their money to:

Any anti-war activist with an IQ above room temperature should make it loudly known that Mr. Galloway is not welcome here. He is not our ally, nor our friend. He is a Swamp-thing.

Sadly Marc, over here we’ve been waiting for a few years for the British anti-war movement to drain their swamp – and we are still waiting.

He has some even better suggestions for the American anti-war movement: show up to one of the Galloway events to let him know, whatever you think of George W. Bush, that apologists for murderers are not welcome amongst us.

Back to poor old Comrade Chretien who is having a hard time of things and despairs at the bad press his boy is getting:

Reading the scribblers, I worried, for a moment, that maybe they would discourage people from getting involved in the movement to end the war.

Inshallah……

But its not all bad for Galloway, despite the anti-war liberals of America turning against his man Chretien gets some positive reaction at last:

Then I received the following email from my mother:

….Please tell Mr. Galloway that we are so proud to have him here, speaking the truth so clearly to the American people.

That’s cheered him up: My bet is that many more people agree with her than all the aforementioned columnists combined.

Yep buddy. Even when everyone else is turning their back on your Saddamite friend, you can always rely on good ol’ Mom.