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Cambridge, Massachusetts is the most liberal city in America. This made Cambridge the perfect setting for our most recent prank: to find out what social causes do liberals really care about? We wanted to find out not what liberals say, but what they will actually do, when presented with the opportunity for action.  Typical public concert in Cambridge. Home to Harvard and MIT, Cambridge is the "bastion of upper middle-class, white, intellectual liberalism." The first legal gay marriage licenses in America were issued in Cambridge City Hall. Residents walk around chewing granola and wearing peasant skirts. It's like Berkeley, but even Berkeleyer.  The setting was the Harvard Square Mayfair, an enormous open-market festival that takes place in downtown Cambridge each May. Hundreds of exhibitors set up booths selling patchouli and     We rented a booth, and set up a "Pieathon," where we charged liberals $3.00 to throw a pie at a clown, with proceeds going toward a specific cause. We also set up a petition that liberals could sign for free. The catch was that each hour, we changed the cause. Hour 1: Environmental Issues Slogan: Stop Global Warming! Charity: World Wildlife Fund Hour 2: 2nd Amendment Issues Slogan: Stop Handgun Violence! Charity: Stop Handgun Violence Hour 3: Women's Issues Slogan: Support a Woman's Right to Choose! Charity: Save the Children Hour 4: Men's Issues Slogan: Stop Erectile Dysfunction! Charity: Men's Health Network Hour 5: Conservative Media Slogan: Get Bill O'Reilly Off the Air! Charity: William J. Clinton Foundation Which causes would draw the most money? Which would generate the most signatures? These were some of the questions that were filling our heads as we began to fill the pies.  Here we are setting up the booth before the event; we're sandwiched between a company supporting global trade, and a macrobiotic food company. It was a typical Cambridge liberalfest of serious, important causes -- and we stuck out like a chicken in church. Famed comic actor Mike Hoban was to play the clown, and experienced carny barker Darcey Leonard would separate the liberals from their money. As I ran over the gameplan, the same questions kept coming up: what if people came back and discovered our cause had changed? Would we get our asses kicked, or (in true liberal style) a serious talking-to, followed by a trade embargo? I calmed the nerves of the players by reassuring them that I had only been arrested once by the Cambridge police (as documented in my book), and that even the decidedly non-liberal Cambridge police force wouldn't arrest a loveable clown. Still, our adrenaline was high as we got into costume and prepared to experiment on the liberals.
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