{"id":24845,"date":"2011-02-26T12:19:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T12:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/02\/26\/justin-biebers-new-haircut\/"},"modified":"2011-02-26T12:19:41","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T12:19:41","slug":"justin-biebers-new-haircut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/26\/justin-biebers-new-haircut\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Bieber’s New Haircut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many years ago, during The Roe v. Wade Fight (Part II: The Rise of the Right Wing Yahoos) <\/em> a student came to me and asked for a break because she wanted to join a bus full of Brandeis students heading down to DC to protest stuff. I told her not to worry about the quiz coming up, just go and do her civic duty. That’s when she chose to casually mention that “at least these days, we know how to do it, not like in the old days when protesters against the Viet Nam War were violent.<\/p>\n

This caused me to whup her up side the head. Verbally, of course.<\/p>\n

I explained that in the old<\/em> old days, when the population spoke up against authority, their villages were burned and people were randomly identified as trouble makers and impaled on stakes. I talked about the early union protests, and how one workers’ village was burned to the ground with the women and children hiding in the wooden houses. I mentioned the US Amy using machines guns on veterans protesting for their rights in Washington. And so on. And, eventually I pointed out that the reason she could drag her sorry ass down to DC and have a nice peaceful protest was because of her fore-bearers, not because she and her friends had “figured something out.” Previous protesters stood in front of onrushing mounted police or railed against soldiers carrying live ammo knowing a) “I might be killed” and b) “If I am killed, it will reduce the chance that the state will be able to use these techniques on future generations of snot-nosed privileged Harvard undergrads.”<\/p>\n

But at least, she wasn’t primarily interested in the 1980s equivalent of Justin Bieber’s New Haircut. So, now that I have your attention, here are a few current news stories:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n