The Live Make-Out Tour, sponsored by PETA, consists of scantily clad couples making out on public sidewalks. It is being staged throughout the country to demonstrate PETA's claims that vegetarians are better lovers.

Daniel Geffen links to an insightful piece of correspondence on Ed Fitzgerarld's blog about protests:

...when the original civil rights marches were being organized, those behind them INSISTED that anyone participating must look and act a certain way. Folks had to be clean, they had to have good haircuts and either be shaved or with neatly-trimmed beards and mustaches. On many of the early civil rights marches, men HAD to wear ties and white shirts and dress slacks. Women HAD to wear neat, professional work dresses or skirts and blouses.

Today, there are plenty of (mostly leftists) who want to protest but almost never, it seems, actually think much about whether or not they are going to have an impact. Martin Luther King and other civil rights pioneers were deadly serious about what they were trying to accomplish. They weren't going out there just to feel good about themselves: they had a clear agenda, and didn't want anything to hurt their efforts. Most particularly, they did not want any "supporter" actually hurting their cause. For a stark contrast to this, consider that here in Portland, Oregon, there are regular anti-war protests downtown. Just about every week. The participants have a bunch of banners and signs, and they always have a drummer or two pounding away. They march along the sidewalks, stopping for lights, and I believe they always have permits. But they look like a band of hippies, and absolutely NO ONE takes them seriously. Even people opposed to the war sniff at them. I am quite sure that they have NEVER turned a single opinion against the war, and quite possibly managed to turn away more than a few middle-of-the-roaders...

...it seems to me that many leftists who engage in protests -- marches, demonstrations, and so on -- do so in order to look like they're doing something, or feel like they're doing something ... but not, in fact, in order to actually DO something.