Storm clouds gather over Republicans
Convention deals with rain and protests
TAMPA, Fla., — Storm clouds darkened both cliffs of America’s political chasm Sunday as fat-cat Republicans squeezed into Fortress Tampa for their slimmeddown National Convention while, back in Washington, President Barack Obama’s usual weekend golf game was rained out.
Counties to the south of Tampa Bay — including the Canadian protectorates of Fort Myers and Bonita Springs — were under mandatory evacuation orders as the path of Hurricane Isaac veered northwestward from the Keys. In a swing state where millions of homeowners remain underwater from the real-estate crash of the late Bush/early Obama years, a Category 1-or-More storm seemed likely to whip both red- and blueleaning voters into a demoralized purple froth.
No one was less happy about Sunday’s first raindrops and humid winds than a man named Marshal Reese who, with his partner Nora Ligorano, had been permitted to install an ice sculpture in a downtown Tampa plaza, monitored by hundreds of uniformed constables on implacable horses and Safariland velocipedes and an equal number of anarchists, Luddites, Raging Grannies, laid-off postal workers, classless scholars and saltwater hoboes who were chalking BANKS LOVE A POLICE STATE on the sidewalk and chanting “Who stole our money? Give our money back!”
The sculpture, barely two hours old and already vanishing tearfully, was simply the words MIDDLE CLASS.
“We thought it would last four to six hours,” Reese said. “We’re optimists.”
“Then you can’t be Democrats,” I suggested.
“Actually, we’re Progressives,” the artist countered. “That would put us to the far left.”
It wasn’t the first time that Ligorano/Reese, as the couple styled themselves, had tried to send a message in melting ice. They once trickled down the word ECONOMY not far from Wall Street, and they liquidated DEMOCRACY at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2008.