Peace on Parade in Hollywood

The fighting in the Persian Gulf has been over for several weeks now, but we are still basking in the glory of a war we finally won.

One indication of this is the upcoming Welcome Home Desert Storm & Hooray for Hollywood Parade, during which we are expected to display just what it was that sent them enemy I-raqisscattering like sand flees over the desert.

There’ll be enough arms and armament on and over Sunset Boulevard to outfit another kickass-campaign somewhere else in the world.

What the parade will not include, however, are those who believe in peace and love.

This isn’t the kind of parade intended to manifest America’s potential to wage nonviolence. We don’t build F-17s to solidify the brotherhood of man, unless you consider melting people together a form of, you know, solidification.

At any rate, the parade will be held in Hollywood on May 19 and, like everything else in L.A. these days, it has generated controversy.

As soon as he heard about it, for instance, Venice peace activist Jerry Rubin, who is about as welcome at a patriotic parade as a pimple on the nose, applied for permission to join in.

At first the parade people said sure, but then changed their minds when veterans organizations threatened a storm of their own if Rubin and the Rubinettes were allowed to participate.

“Who next,” one of them roared, “Hanoi Jane?”

Hanoi Jane, for those too young to know, is the name given Jane Fonda for her anti-war activities during the Vietnam era. We know her today as Fitness Jane, the Queen of Low Impact Aerobics. Times change.

My initial reaction to the parade controversy was no reaction at all. Everyone knows Rubin is going to raise as much hell as possible in the name of peace. Everyone also knows there are those who would cheerfully rip his head off in opposition to his point of view.

That’s pretty much what’s happening now. Rubin says his efforts to put a peace unit in the Desert Storm Parade have resulted in threats to his well-being. I’m not surprised.

Only a week or so ago an anonymous death threat was telephoned to a high school vice principal in Santa Clarita Valley over the method of selecting girls to a cheerleading squad.

If you can stir someone to homicide over who’s going to be chosen to jump and yell on behalf of school spirit, it is understandable that violence is just around the corner when peace moseys down the street.

Rubin seems to have dropped from sight since he was threatened. No one answers his home telephone, and his Alliance for Survival message machine is full and won’t take any more messages.

Either others have joined in warning him to stay out of the parade, or he is receiving an abundance of calls from those supporting his efforts to see the Rubinettes marching between War Heroes Against Peace (WHAP!) and bikers who, while generally apolitical, support whatever activity seems to cause pain.

Before he dropped out of sight, Rubin told me that all his group wanted to do was carry a peace banner in the parade, not try to disrupt it altogether. Later, he even modified that by offering to simply display Biblical admonitions like, “Thou shalt not kill.”

The parade leaders said nice try, but no cigar. Thou shalt not march.

I warned Rubin this probably wasn’t the best time to rally for peace, what with feelings running pretty high among men whose arms are longer than their legs.

Victory in war, even a quick, easy one, stirs the same machismo that causes riots at soccer games. You can hear the winners shouting “We’re number one!” all over town. They’re not thinking peace. They’re thinking trophy.

A Marine gunnery sergeant I know pointed out that the peace activists had their chance to stop the war before it started and failed.

“They got all kinds of coverage on television,” he observed, “but it didn’t do them one damned bit of good. Now it’s our turn.”

By that he meant the turn of those celebrating what they were unable to celebrate after the wars in Vietnam and Korea. It’s like the New York Yankees winning the World Series again after years in the cellar.

I can understand that. Everyone needs something to cheer about occasionally. If the cheering happens to be associated with blood and tears, well, hell, man, c’est la guerre, right?

But I hope the one small voice for peace Rubin represents will continue to be heard beyond the drums and bugles, and that he, in his way, will still be marching for peace long after the parade has passed him by.