On Sept. 12, a large crowd gathered in Washington to protest … what? The goals of Congress and the Obama Administration, mainly — the cost, the scale, the perceived leftist intent. The crowd’s agenda was wide-ranging, so it’s hard to be more specific. “End the Fed,” a sign read. A schoolboy’s placard denounced “Obama’s Nazi Youth Militia.” Another poster declared, “We the People for Capitalism Not Socialism.” If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic. Either way, you may not be inclined to believe what we say about numbers, according to a recent poll that found record-low levels of public trust of the mainstream media.
At any rate, what we can say with confidence is that Deanna Frankowski was there. A cheery woman of 49 from Leeds, Ala., Frankowski said she had come to Washington as part of a group of 100 or more protesters. They filled two buses. And they were motivated by a concern about runaway government spending — that, plus an outraged feeling that their views as citizens are not being heard. “We are sick and tired of being ignored,” she said. “There is too much money being spent.”
Frankowski has been hit hard by the economic turmoil of the past year. Short of funds to make the trip, she painted an American flag on a pane of glass and asked people at her church to chip in toward her expenses, with one of them taking home the flag. She would like to share a house with her soon-to-be husband, but first she must figure out how to get free of the house she has — the one with the underwater mortgage. Some left-leaning writers argue that people in her boat must be deluded to oppose Barack Obama, but Frankowski is skeptical that her interests are being served by trillions in new government interventions. So she said, “I’ve paid my mortgage every month. And I’m getting no help. I’m just saying, Let capitalism work.” Then she added, “We just want people to listen to us and care.”
One person listens, Frankowski believes, and that’s why back home in Alabama she arranged to have 10 large signs made on white foam board, nine of them marked with a big letter and the tenth with we and a heart. Raised aloft, the signs spelled out “We ♥ G-l-e-n-n B-e-c-k.”
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Portions of the classic horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were based on the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein, but the trademark Leatherface mask was inspired by a far more personal (and equally grisly) experience. Writer/director Tobe Hooper had a doctor friend who’d once confided to him that, while a pre-med student, he’d sneaked into the morgue and harvested the skin from the face of a cadaver to make a Halloween mask. Bob Burns, the movie’s art director, took several of Leatherface’s props home with him after filming wrapped, including one of the three original “killing” masks, which he mounted on a Styrofoam head and sprayed with a transparent sealant. He kept the head in a shoebox in his closet for many years before selling it to a friend, who then auctioned it on eBay for an undisclosed sum. The successful bidder was a horror film fanatic who now proudly displays the mask in his home in a specially built air-tight case.