True or False: War Opponents=Hippies?

by bert

Mary Ringgenberg is a 78-year-old resident of a puny town in Iowa, and she opposes the war in Iraq. If you've driven past the burg of Early at the intersection of Highway 71 and East Second Street in the past two months, you might have seen her holding up signs.

Ringgenberg has appeared at that corner in this town of 600 people for as long as 90 minutes almost every day since the middle of May, protesting the Iraq war the best way she could come up with. "I decided to do it because I can't stand it anymore," she says.

What's funny about this is I learned about Mrs. Ringgenberg around last Monday when in fact Rush Limbaugh was giving us his picture of what the opposition to the war looks like.

The anti-war movement as it exists in this country remains a bunch of relics from the 1960s. In fact, I think Live Earth was such a disaster, it may spell the end of all of these live everythings: Live Aid, Live 8. This was indicative of a format and a technique that's simply run its course. But when you can't even get a bunch of long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking, blue-jean clad, tie-dyed wearing FM types out there taking advantage of this kind of an opportunity to preach against the war . . . I'm telling you, the American people are not experiencing a great uprising against the war.

He might at least be right that there is not in the U.S. an unavoidably visible mobilization of opponents to the war. (There was one of 'em at Summerfest, or so I heard). But they are out there, seething, and mostly ignored by reporters and Rush. Mrs. Ringgenberg, for example, is not very visible because she doesn't have Rush's golden microphone. She just has a sign and a house by U.S. 71.

Here she is on video.