This story is so chock-full of delicious irony, I'm not quite sure where to start. How about here -- with Team Obama sniveling about Romney supporters behaving in a "juvenile" fashion, and demanding that the candidate instruct them to clean up their act. No sale, says Mitt:
Mitt Romney won't ask his supporters to stop heckling President Obama and his surrogates at campaign events. During a radio interview on Tuesday, the presumptive GOP nominee declined an opportunity to ask his supporters to stop, saying his campaign didn't "believe in unilateral disarmament." Team Romney drew flack last week after its campaign bus reportedly circled the site of the president's economic address in Cleveland honking its horn repeatedly to taunt the Obama's supporters. Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith, on Twitter, blasted the move as "juvenile." "If campaigns are a reflection of their candidates, what do the Romney campaign's antics say about Mitt Romney?" Smith tweeted.
It says that at least Romney has ardent backers who don't need to be compensated for their nuisance-causing services, that's what. To what am I referring? To a BuzzFeed story so piquant that it must be savored slowly. Read the whole thing; you won't regret it. But in the meantime, a sampling of the buffet:
The protesters popping up at Mitt Romney's rallies throughout Michigan Tuesday look like run-of-the-mill grassroots liberals — they wave signs about "the 99 percent," they chant about the Republican's greed, and they describe themselves as a loosely organized coalition of "concerned citizens." They're also getting paid, two of the protesters and an Obama campaign official told BuzzFeed. At the candidate's afternoon stop outside a bakery in DeWitt, a group of about 15 protesters stood behind a police barricade, a few of them chanting in support of Obama. Asked why he was protesting, a man dressed in a grim reaper costume pointed a reporter to a pair of "designated representatives" standing in the shade.
"I can't talk, you gotta get one of those people over there to talk to y'all," he said. "They're the ones who can talk to reporters." Neither of the representatives agreed to give their names, but two protesters said they were getting paid to stand outside of the rally, though their wage is unclear: one said she was getting $7.25 per hour, while another man said they were being paid $17 per hour...
What's that? The female pro-Obama professional heckler gets paid a fraction of her male counterpart's hourly take? And she isn't even making minimum wage? B-b-but, I thought the Left cared deeply about equal pay rights. I mean, what would Lily say about this grave misogynistic injustice playing out within the booming noise pollution sector? Oh, and it turns out that paid mercenaries aren't necessarily all that dedicated to the cause, bro:
While both sides enjoy a good, loud demonstration, it's generally acknowledged that paying people to protest is a form of cheating — which explains why the Obama campaign was quick to distance themselves from the group. By the end of Romney's remarks, most of the "Good Jobs Now" group was standing in the shade, chatting amongst themselves and letting their signs hang to the the ground. And while the Democrats aligned with the Obama campaign continued to shout at rally-goers as they filed out of the event, the other group of demonstrators made their way down the street and loaded on to a charter bus.
Chant it with me: "This-is-what-underpaid-astroturf-looks-like!" Parting thought: See? Barack Obama really is creating private sector jobs.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member