It wasn’t long after the announcement of President Obama’s Class of 2010 commencement appearance that rumors of planned protests started swirling. I’d heard that a few hundred Tea Partiers were planning to travel up to Ann Arbor from Ohio and air their grievances before the Obama-obsessed masses filing, zombie-like, into Michigan Stadium.
Their provocative signs would spark a heated debate over the failures of the current administration or, alternatively, definitively prove to the masses just how intolerant all those angry white folks were capable of being.
So after setting out early Saturday morning, fully expecting to be greeted with sights of Ann Arbor police in riot gear struggling to break up the skirmishes between the amassed pro- and anti-Obama factions, I was crestfallen to see an unimpressive dozen or so poncho-wearing malcontents lost in the sea of commencement attendees.
Yes, there were the well-traveled pro-life protesters with their graphic anti-abortion signs—signs that, probably because of their shocking nature, were simply ignored by the majority of those passing by. “Gross!” was the most frequent response I heard, and, as far as I could tell, no insightful pro-choice/pro-life discussions were initiated by any of their poster boards.
By the time the crowd shuffling towards the Big House gates ran the gauntlet of pro-lifers, they were even less interested in hearing what the few Tea Partiers who braved the inclement weather had to say. Or rather, what their signs had to say; they were a disappointingly quiet and respectful lot.
In fact, the megaphone-equipped band of Obama supporters across the street from the Tea Partiers was probably the only obnoxious group of protesters of the day—if only because they were loud (and a bit delusional: incessantly repeating “Obama will only raise taxes on the top one percent” does not make it true).
And they weren’t the only left-leaning activists there to counter the practically nonexistent right-wing threat. AnnArbor.com reports that “several hundred” individuals gathered nearby Frisinger Park in support of immigration reform and immigrant rights, but to the average commencement attendee like myself, they were all but invisible.
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