Jerk with a t-shirt

[Steve Furlong]

On Wednesday 23 July 2003 09:18, Tyler Durden wrote:

> But it sounds like a rehash of the mall incident

You don't know what you're talking about. This happened just a few miles 
from me, so perhaps I've paid closer attention than you have. T-shirt 
man wasn't merely minding his own business while wearing an offensive 
shirt. He was stepping in front of people and haranguing them in front 
of a large anchor store in the mall. After a while he was asked to 
leave by a store employee, so he took himself to the food court and 
repeated the procedure. After complaints from several mall patrons, a 
security guard asked T-shirt man to either knock it off or leave. 
T-shirt man refused, growing more and more aggressive, and eventually 
the local cops came along and arrested him. (I may have fudged some 
details, as I'm working from memory, but I don't think I screwed up 
anything important.)

OK, so far it could be the spontaneous actions of one guy. But, even 
though the story wasn't reported until the late news that evening, 
there was a large (hundreds, IIRC) crowd of protesters when the mall 
opened the next morning. This might not sound like much to someone used 
to NYC crowds, but by the standards of this area that was a huge crowd. 
I guess it _could_ have been a spontaneous rising of a populace fed up 
with jack-booted thug harrassment of dissenting opinion. But the more I 
hear about it, the more this sounds like a planned operation.

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

"If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using
their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that
these people have these weapons at all!"  -- Rep. Henry Waxman