The other day, the John Kerry supporters who assembled to demonstrate across from the site of Dick Cheney’s speech provoked a predictable onslaught of deft and bland humor, not to mention some unmasked rage, from the Cheney supporters issuing out of the convention center. While a few opted to simply flip the bird at the demonstrators, most eschewed that approach for an equally flippant one: Yelling “flip-flop” at the sea of Kerry signs.

One man drove by the demonstration while his young son held an example of the now notorious footwear out the window. Another Bush supporter parked his motorcycle squarely across from the demonstrators and commenced a deafening repetition of the two-word phrase: “Flip-flop, flippity-flop” and so on. Meanwhile, a fellow Bush supporter proudly displayed a sign that read: “I am a Democrat who is voting for Bush.”

Excuse me. Perhaps I should have begun by defining irony. First, there are the facts. Kerry said he voted to give the president the power to go to war because he thinks presidents should have that power. He did not, however, agree with the particular war in which the current president embroiled himself (and our country). Two responses were born of these statements. First, “If I were a simple person, I would think that Kerry contradicted himself.” And second, “Kerry contradicted himself.” Naturally, the man who plays “Eye of the Tiger” at his rallies pounced on the latter and coined the phrase that places him solidly in the running for “funniest conservative ever.”

Light bulbs went off simultaneously in the heads of millions of young Bush supporters: “What if we bought flip-flops and waved them at Kerry supporters to show that Kerry is a flip-flop? Get it? That would be funny!”

In the second, more ironic stage of the flip-flop phenomenon, Republicans proved that they were, in fact, the “flip-floppers.”

At the Republican National Convention, the Republicans made a point of parading around a turncoat Democrat from Georgia (a “flip-flopper,” if you will) in support of Bush. Also, they attempted to pull off a giant flip by selling the ultraconservative Bush administration as moderate.

Bush says we are winning the war on terror, then that we can’t, then that we definitely can. Bush claims Iraq has WMDs. Oh wait, scratch that, war was for benefit of Iraqis. Bush wants bin Laden. Never mind, we don’t need him. Bush (and especially Cheney) stresses the link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. No they didn’t.

What’s more, a curious tendency exists among ultraconservatives. They hate the immoral idea of stem-cell research, until one of their own gets Alzheimer’s. They hate the preposterous idea that gays could get married, then oops, my daughter is a lesbian. Better back away from that anti-gay rhetoric. This phenomenon sounds curiously like the noise my beach sandals make.

Strand Sheldahl-Thomason

Pendleton