The Swarm of the Savior Bees

It happens every year at about this time. As the leaves begin to turn and clover fades from the fields, desperate honey bees swarm the landscape searching for nourishment.

The Swarms on Capitol Hill, yesterday, were bigger than usual. As I walked across Constitution avenue, I noticed an unusually loud buzzing. It became louder and louder until I started hearing words interspersed with the fenzied hum. "Hallelujah!" "Jesus!" "Praise be!" The swarm was now in full view: hundreds of thousands of Christian men—the Promise Keepers—had arrived in my neighborhood.

For all the denouncements by the National Organization for Women, you would think that the Promise Keepers were a dangerous reactionary force, poised to snatch liberated women and coerce them into subservience. From what I saw, the Promise Keepers were far from dangerous. They were just annoying. Whenever a convoy of busses from Dixie unloads a half million pot-bellied, balding, hot dog-chowing yokels, it's going to bring down the neighborhood.

That's precisely the problem with most national demonstrations of late. Ever since the Million Man March shipped hundreds of thousands of black men to the Capitol, there has been a severe shortage of out-of-town activist women on the Hill. What we need is a Billion Babe March. Perhaps a few hundred thousand breast implant recipients could march on the Capitol to demand product safety. Or maybe a million or so bikini-laden beach babes could protest anti-thong regulations in support of their right to self-expression. Better yet, we could combine both! NOW's Patricia Ireland could stay home, and yield the floor to Kathy Ireland.

The problem with this scenario, of course, is that such a crowd wouldn't stay mostly women for long. Millions of men—Promise Keepers included—would quickly overwhelm the rally.