We could still have marches today that made a real point. If 100,000 homeless veterans marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, people would pay attention and something would likely be done. But events like that are rare. Just as political parties have debased and devalued the political convention, so the culture of protest over the decades has turned what used to be a major event into a sideshow.

The media still covers protests like it still covers other camera-friendly pseudo-events like political conventions and G8 and G20 summits; the media beast needs to be fed, and events that produce images do not have to produce results to get onto the “news”. That media coverage in turn draws people to these pseudo-events; groups like Code Pink, Koran-burning preacher nutcases and the “fundamentalist” loons who try to disrupt military funerals are addicted to media exposure and measure their effectiveness by the screen time they get.

The self evident futility of this cycle — the media mistakes a pseudo-event for something real and covers it; protestors mistake media coverage for influence and step up the protests — is one of the reasons that the whole concept of protest has become so debased.

Unfortunately for the left, the more “typical” a protest looks, the less important it appears.