Monday, July 03, 2006

When was the last time a hunger strike accomplished anything?

I'm just asking.

Update
I've got very intelligent commentors. Thank goodness they both have their own blogs. Steve brings up the PR component of a hunger strike. Chris brings up a good point about follow through. The hunger strike meant something when people were willing to die in the hunger strike. Nobody, at least not in this country, is willing to die a miserable death of starvation for any cause today. So why should the rest of us care about an empty gesture? And here's an additional thought that I gleaned from the content of both of their comments-do we even have the attention span for a full out hunger strike today? Sure, the media might, but does the average American? I bet by day 14 most Americans would turn on the hunger strikers just because they got sick of hearing about it.

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