THE LAROUCHIES ARE HERE!

There's one on the chair on my balcony right now, rubbing his legs together and staring at me with his big red eyes. Wait a minute, that's not a LaRouche fanatic at all -- it's the first cicada I've seen all season! But you can understand how I got them confused.

The local papers and television news have been treating this cicada thing like it'll be a plague of locusts straight out of John's Revelation (note: I am aware that cicadas are not locusts), blackening the earth and darkening the sky. But so far my encounter with the awfully sleepy bug has been limited to the brief meet-and-greet I just had. Nor have I heard them yet -- and thanks to a 1995 trip to Beijing, I know what to listen for -- although the sound could be lost amidst the lawnmower across the street, the high school marching band down the hill, or my own air conditioner.

Anyway, about those LaRouchies -- they were here, too. 'Here' meaning down on the corner out in the street, where a handful of young black male LaRouchies were handing out glossy magazine-like pamphlets titled "The LaRouche Doctrine." (Most of the LaRouchies I've seen are late-middle aged white women.) They were probably about two feet off school property, which I assume is why they were allowed to continue, in full view of the security guards. I hope those kids are smart enough to sidestep all that conspiratorial nuttiness -- not to mention the cicadas.

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posted by WWB at 4:28 PM |