I spent the holiday weekend in Washington. Monday morning I headed to the airport to return to Chicago for my final week at the Institute of Politics. The driver took a long and strange route, and when I landed, I found out why: a group of Ferguson protesters had shut down a major artery during rush hour, causing huge delays, especially for inbound commuters.
Ferguson protests have been active in Washington for several days — shutting down streets, surprising shoppers at various retail centers. There's been a lot of back and forth about the propriety of taking over highways in order to protest injustice in another city. I'm not going to get into that debate, because I doubt that anyone involved is open to persuasion. But it's worth exploring a different question: regardless of the morality, is this a good tactic?
The last week has brought defenses of these sorts of disruptive protests — even a few defenses of rioting — on the grounds that this is the only way to get public attention. And it's true: These protests have certainly attracted attention. But attention that helps the cause? You often hear that there's no such thing as bad publicity. That is deep nonsense, as I'm sure Bill Cosby could testify right about now.