When we last left our heroes - participants in Wisconsin's daily protest known as the Solidarity Sing-Along - their 300th singing protest had been infiltrated by a timid cameraman and a bad dancer wearing an LA Dodgers cap. The humble and compassionate Wisconsin singers, who welcome all opinions in their circle, waited patiently while the bad dancer made a little speech between songs. They corrected him when he made a math error while talking about Governor Walker's budget, then gave him a golf clap after he talked about his desire to make America more like Europe.
We didn't appreciate the little dance he did during one of our songs. He included a series of "tomahawk chops" in the dance. Not cool, but looking at his well-groomed eyebrows we could tell he was an urbanite from one of the coasts so we hesitantly let it go.
Later, there was talk that the bad dancer was perhaps up to some mischief, or might be suffering from a seizure disorder, so the singers made an attempt to identify who he was and for whom he might be working.
Well, now we know the identity of the bad dancer: Ami Horowitz. Here he is sitting in his rented car outside the state capitol the day after his dance solo, waiting while his cameraman takes more footage of an outdoor Sing-Along while trying to avoid nosy singers asking questions. They didn't stay long, even though the singers repeatedly invited Mr. Horowitz to join them so they could teach him a proper polka.
In my previous post about the then-unidentified "Dodger fan" and his cameraman, I included a poll asking readers to speculate who the strangers worked for. Scott Walker was the winner, followed by Fox News, "Protesters Gone Wild", Lex Luthor, and Glenn Beck. You guys are pretty smart. Ami Horowitz does indeed have past associations with Glenn Beck, Fox News, and Andrew Breitbart. You know, big time.
Us folks in Wisconsin have been portrayed inaccurately before by Fox News, which is why we were suspicious. Fox did a story about the "violent" Wisconsin protests and included footage from an unrelated protest in California. The palm trees in Wisconsin (the rare "Tundra Palm") are actually much taller than California palm trees, which is what tipped us off.
Horowitz also has one credit on IMDb - a "documentary" about how gosh-darn expensive it is to operate the United Nations. Apparently it didn't do well, despite Mr. Horowitz's prediction of success: "I expect this film to break the top 10 documentaries of all time." Here is his bio from townhall.com, which also has a link to send an email to Mr. Horowitz:
Ami Horowitz was an investment banker for 12 years before he was hit over the head with a rock and abruptly decided that film making was his calling. He has written for publications such as the Weekly Standard and National Review and appeared on ABC radio, CNN and Fox News.
Hit in the head with a rock. Well, that explains the bad dancing. I once tossed a rock into the garden to scare out a rabbit hiding somewhere in the strawberries. The rock hit the rabbit right on the head and the rabbit collapsed, spun around in the dirt a few times like Curly from the Three Stooges, then got up and ran away. I still feel guilty. I just wanted to scare the little bunny, not give him a brain injury.
Please come back to Wisconsin, Mr. Horowitz. You missed all the best stuff. I lied in my previous post. We're not that nice. You probably got video of the wedding couple that sang with us, the school children who clapped along, the state Senators who joined us for a while, and the young Amish women in the alcove quietly singing along to our songs about peace and justice, but we can be much worse than what you told Glenn Beck you encountered at Occupy Wall Street:
Horowitz, who laughingly summed up his experience succinctly by saying “the level of indignity I’m willing to suffer for you people knows no bounds,” opened his footage with a clip of a Marilyn Manson lookalike who couldn’t stop twitching. However, that might give the audience the wrong idea about the protesters so Horowitz compassionately reminds the viewer, in his narration, that “Ok, they weren’t all like that.” He then cuts to a girl in a nose ring and an interview with someone who appears to be on drugs.
Marilyn Manson lookalike? A girl who only appeared to be on drugs? That's nothing. If you had only stayed in Madison a little longer the other day, you would have seen the diabetic man in a "Fighting Bob La Follette" wig (I think it was a wig) mainlining heroin in the men's room on the Capitol's 3rd floor, or the retired librarian handing out helium-filled balloons to school kids in the rotunda and encouraging them to "see how high they can get."
Please, Mr Horowitz, come back. The tundra palms will be blooming in a couple weeks. You won't want to miss it. We promise we'll be bad this time. Real bad.
(OK, now that Horowitz is gone, I'll let the rest of you in on a little secret. That stuff about the helium and the heroin is slightly exaggerated. We have lots of video and dozens of photographs of Mr. Horowitz and we have forwarded everything to the University of Wisconsin Hospital. We are hoping Mr. Horowitz returns so we can have him involuntarily committed to the UW Hospital's world-renowned "Clinic for the Dance Impaired." He is a danger to himself and others.)