I’ve been having trouble all week hanging on to my well-cultivated prejudice against lawyers. It’s because of those barristers in Pakistan:

“Police baton-charged and scuffled with dozens of lawyers … Lawyers have taken to the streets in protest … Police fired tear gas and clubbed thousands of lawyers … Stone-throwing lawyers … Hundreds of police blocked about 1,000 lawyers … Police were hurt by bricks flung by lawyers … [Police] brutalized peaceful lawyers and arrested them … Clashes broke out between hundreds of lawyers … Riot police prevented 1,000 lawyers from … Lawyers and the police then hurled stones at each other … Lawyers will continue their struggle for the restoration of the constitution until their death …”

What is this: a nation of lawyers? Freedom-loving, injustice-hating lawyers? As many as 3,000 of 12,000 arrested are lawyers. How do you even get thousands of lawyers in one spot? What’s next? Therapists? I’m not alone. “Why lawyers?” blurted a CNN anchor, as if going off script (maybe it was due to the Hollywood writers’ strike), voicing the confusion many felt.

I mean, did you ever try talking to one? (“Did you ever try eating with one?” says a character in The Producers, arguing about whether actors are people. Oh damn, there’s goes another category.) Lawyers think funny, as in linear: A to B to C to D. No room for digression, qualification, fuzziness, circling back, the way normal people think. But they think the rest of us sound foolish. They get a smug tone when they talk to another lawyer, as if now they’re speaking to someone who knows the same smart language.

Mind you, it is common in Third World, colonial or neo-colonial settings, for members of what used to be called the petite bourgeoisie — lawyers, journalists, academics, artists — to take the lead in fights for rights. Gandhi was a lawyer. The last time we had martial law in Canada was 37 years ago in Quebec, where many people had come to think of themselves as colonized.

The people jailed then weren’t the armed insurgents; it was poets, singers, lawyers, TV producers — same as in Pakistan. There, the people arrested, “besides judges and lawyers, have included peace activists, teachers, artists” — “the democratic, secular elite,” says writer Ahmed Rashid. Come to think of it, in Toronto back in 1970, as I recall, most of “the left” were hiding under their beds; the people who led a public protest in City Hall square against martial law were young lawyers Clayton Ruby and Paul Copeland.

Maybe it’s the imposition of military rule that brings out the (unexpected) best in lawyers. You become one in order to feel important and useful. Then, under martial law, which is no law at all worthy of the name, you’re stripped of that and you’re not going to take it. You become a big opposer, in contrast to your role under the “normal” democratic state of affairs, where the law is in cahoots with power.

The Pakistani bar seems to do even better, by acting as their society’s political bullshit detectors. For example, opposition politician Benazir Bhutto claims to fight for democracy but co-ordinates with the U.S. and colludes with General Pervez Musharraf. She calls for an end to martial law but fudges on whether fired Supreme Court judges, who led this battle, will be restored. The lawyers have been firm about that. I believe that, in these situations, most people on the ground sense the truth about the issues, yet can lack confidence in their own judgment. It helps to have their instincts verified by “respectable” forces — like lawyers, in their black-suited throngs.

So who’s next — writers? I doubt it. Those striking TV writers are so whiny and self-important. But, in fact, a fine actor can salvage a rotten script, while the greatest writing won’t survive bad performers. Had the original Hamlet had a lousy cast, it would have closed and no one would have ever heard of it.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.