Rent-A-Rally

Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 25, 2007

Get yourself a gaggle of protesters in Germany, where "more than 300 would-be protesters are marketing themselves on a German rental website." While you are on the Erento.com website leasing kids to carry your placards, you can also rent a movie for the evening, or a vacation house for next summer. For your next rally, consider Melanie:

Next to a black and white posed picture, Melanie lists her details from her jeans size to her shoe size and tells potential protest organisers that she is willing to be deployed up to 100km around Berlin.

Six hours of Melanie bearing your banner or shouting your slogan will set you back 145 euros.

Via Marginal Revolution

Comments

|1.25.07 @ 1:41PM|#

There are a number of nubile young Promoterinen on that site that I'd gladly hire to bear my banner and shout my slogan...

|1.25.07 @ 1:48PM|#

I've got mixed feelings on this. It isn't that different from other accepted norms, like hiring an adagency or giving volunteer protestors free food, entertainment, and an exemption from attending class. I'm for keeping it legal, but I have less respect for an organization that hires protestors.

|1.25.07 @ 1:48PM|#

This ain't new.

http://mu-warrior.blogspot.com/2006/02/unions-hire-people-at-low-wages-with.html

|1.25.07 @ 1:52PM|#

jtuf, I don't know why giving "volunteer" protesters privileges and free stuff should be an accepted norm. Where I come from, that is non-cash compensation.

|1.25.07 @ 1:54PM|#

I think I may hire the Rent-A-Rally people to protest Rent-A-Rally agencies.

That'll really bake their collective noodles.

75 grams of PO|1.25.07 @ 2:04PM|#

Gotta love that entrepreneurial spirit! Everything's for sale if you can just figure out how to market it. Thank goodness for free market capitalism!

|1.25.07 @ 2:23PM|#

If the LP were smart, it would stage protests with a crack cadre of young hotties. Within two years, the LP would control the United States at all levels. The media, despite any biases, would be helpless in broadcasting and rebroadcasting the libertarian message. . .delivered via low-cut, well-filled t-shirts.

|1.25.07 @ 2:26PM|#

Pro Libertate: You're goddam right.

Does this story remind anybody of Bonfire of the Vanities?

|1.25.07 @ 2:28PM|#

Pro Libertate, we'd have to hire them, because we probably couldn't find more than 10 in our ranks.

|1.25.07 @ 2:30PM|#

The first thing we need to do is establish a certification and licensing regime; we simply cannot allow just any old nobody to hire him- or herself out for a picket line.

|1.25.07 @ 2:43PM|#

J sub D,

I beg to differ. Although hot babe concentration levels within the LP may be low, I saw quite a worthy candidates for my plan when I attended a Cato conference back in the late 90s. In any event, we believers in the free market should have no trouble hiring people to do this, regardless of their personal beliefs. While on the payroll, they damned well will speak libertarian!! Or not speak at all. The t-shirts, as I envision them, will have ample room, ample room indeed, for a pithy, libertarian message.

Somebody should call Penn with this idea--I think maybe Penn & Teller '08 might be a possibility, after all. Large breasts and libertarianism. . .two of their favorite things!

|1.25.07 @ 2:50PM|#

Pro Libertate, we'd have to hire them, because we probably couldn't find more than 10 in our ranks.

If I were a young hottie with a well-filled t-shirt, I would be offended at the lack of recongintion I'm getting right now.

|1.25.07 @ 2:57PM|#

Legate Damar,

Indeed. In this substance-obsessed culture, merely aesthetically pleasing young ladies have no chance to communicate their message of liberation and bounty. No chance at all. Won't you give?

VM|1.25.07 @ 3:00PM|#

Heinrich Böll reference here to "Es wird etwas Geschehen" (1957) where the character at the end becomes a professional mourner.

Germany imitates German art. That's gonna be scary when they get to the Scheisse-video phase (but at least they'll explore "the Joy of Flying" beforehand)

|1.25.07 @ 3:04PM|#

Free food and exemption from classes _is_ the norm on campus today. Wheither or not is should be is another debate. I believe free food is OK but professors shouldn't exempt students from classes. For that matter, I was a bit annoyed when a professor cancelled class so he could protest. Anyway, it should be legal and those who don't like it should change things with social pressure and rewards. I don't like hiring protestors, so I won't and I'll speak against it if any of the organizations I belong to want to hire protestors.

creech|1.25.07 @ 4:20PM|#

It's been done: in 1970s CalLP had hotties registering thousands of new Libertarians on the beaches of So. Cal. Been to a few Cal LP conferences and noted low ratio of hotties, however.

|1.25.07 @ 4:46PM|#

creech,

See? It works! Hotties as a voting faction are irrelevant (not enough of them, right?). Hotties as a recruiting inducement--ah, that's another story altogether.

Before people suggest that the GOP and the Democrats could steal this strategy with their infinitely larger war chests, I pre-respond that the major parties are extremely vulnerable to criticism if they employ/exploit women in such a manner. Contra the LP, which can use hottie advertising with full ideological confidence.

|1.25.07 @ 5:07PM|#

Whichever party has the hot women is the party in the ascendance.

And its not because hot women recruit men to the cause.

Its because hot women have an infallible instinct for power.

|1.25.07 @ 5:11PM|#

Its because hot women have an infallible instinct for power.

And money, but I guess that's the same thing.

|1.25.07 @ 8:34PM|#

R C,

Ah, the Power Chicks. Well, that's a different matter. But the LP can simply hire women, cutting out the middleman in wealth delivery.

I'm going to call the RLC leadership and suggest that this is the way to conquer the GOP from within. Yes, my friends, we can overcome the hottie gap!

|1.25.07 @ 11:57PM|#

There are a number of nubile young Promoterinen on that site that I'd gladly hire ...

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

I'm thinking of holding a demonstration in my pants.


PS: I hope the last person I linked to is in fact a female, not feminine-looking dude or a tranny. Looks a little bit Eddie Van Halen. But then again, so does Valerie Bertinelli, and I'd totally do her (as did Eddie).

|1.26.07 @ 8:46AM|#

Indeed. Would it be crime to hire a young lady to parade around one's Dusseldorf hotel room carrying a sign but wearing nothing but love-beads and a pair of socks?

|1.26.07 @ 9:45AM|#

Stevo,

Ich bin Berliner.

Larry A|1.26.07 @ 1:24PM|#

I'm amazed there isn't a college degree in protesting yet. MBS anyone?

|1.26.07 @ 7:23PM|#

Hottie Protestors = Hotestors?