Thanks for the link.
This at least answers my earlier question about whether the policy is being enforced in an even-handed manner.
I’d be interested to hear whether Airman Doors et al. believe that the wife of Bill Young is a “toolbag” and a “grandstanding showboat” for wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it.
Absolutely. There is a time and a place for everything, and that is not the time or the place for any of that nonsense.
Goog God Almighty.
She did not create a disturbance.
She was wearing a fucking T shirt expressing her political views-no more and no less.
The SOTU has no special significance. It’s just another presidential address that happens to be under a title which, while drawn from the Constitution, has no specific constitutional meaning. The president is not required to stand before Congress and give a speech. He can transmit a written report to the same effect. It’s a PR piece for the President, not some sacred writ. The only thing significant about it is that Bush didn’t have absolute control over the makeup of the audience like he usually does. I guess Rove couldn’t figure out a way to keep the duly elected Democratic members of Congress out.
Anyone else remember back when the Democrats had some balls and they’d applaud on non-applause lines of the speeches?
An important part of the government? Horseshit. And wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it is no more disruptive than all those douchebags in the Reagan years who wore red ties or wearing ADS or breast cancer ribbons. None of them were arrested or detained as I recall. This is just one more case of the Bushies showing that they are unable to tolerate dissent in any form and demanding that the president be shielded from any opposition viewpoint.
What she’s been doing, rallies and the like. Doing TV interviews. Whatever. But last night was bullshit.
How effective are any protests? How much less effective are they in the future when you do stupid stuff like she did last night?
With all due respect, I think you’re conflating two issues here. The first is thewar, and the second is the appropriateness/legality of protesting in the House of Representatives.
Since I’m talking about protesting the war in the House of Representatives, they kinda mesh. And if wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it is cause to be described as a hosebag, then shit has definitely got out of hand in this country.
To be fair, the epithet was “toolbag.”
Quite a different animal from a hosebag, if i remember my bags correctly.
A nationally televised political event is not the time or place for political protest?! Horseshit!!
It was “toolbag”.
And she was there to quietly sit on he hands, right? She was invited to the speech by someone who loathes the President, and I have no problem with that. My problem is that she decided to showboat, which I suspect is what she was invited there to do anyway. There is no place for that, any more than there’s a place for me to go to the SotU Address and hang my nuts out.
As for your opinion of the President, I share it. This “syncophant” nonsense is unwarranted.
Perhaps I am. Then again, I’m not the one that thinks that disrupting a national address that’s intended to tell the people how the country is doing and to lay out upcoming policy ideas is OK.
Yep. The “big johnson” shirt was the giveaway there.
Any antics she did or may have done last night would have been just as effective at changing the minds of Bush supporters as all the “Bush is teh suxxor!!!111” threads on this board have been.
You have no idea what she was going to do. No matter what delusions my be playing in your head right now, you cannot look into the future. We do not have “pre-crime” in this nation (not officially, anyway. Sure looks like it’s our unofficial policy) so your pit of her disrupting the president’s speech is stupid and that is what makes you a fool.
Well, that and how you like to bring up how you’ve fought in this war for freedom and liberty yet would deny a woman the right to wear a dissenting t-shirt.
Horseshit. The State of the Union Address is not a fair and honest self-evaluation of an administration, it’s an unabashed rah-rah speech in which the president tells you what a great job he’s done and only admits to problems that are not his fault but that he claims to have a solution for.
Just the same, he gets to make that speech, and gets to have it be a big deal. It’s not kosher for somebody to come along and be a wet smack about it except through the nuance of polite audience response. The people present get to decide when to clap, when to stand and when to snub the president with faint enthusiasm for the network cameras. Sheehan was given that opportunity and she blew it. However, getting arrested is status for a protestor, so all was not lost. Me, I would rather have had TV cameras showing me with my best “Oh, bitch, please!” face during crucial moments. There’s not a lot of actual power in this form of protest, but in this way she probably would have been the dominant angle of coverage for this boiler-plate speech. Instead she played the clown.
Cindy was not asked to cover up her shirt:
Please note Ravenman’s post #92 above.
Right, but you’re not supposed to protest anything in the House of Representatives. That she was protesting the war was just incidental, and you can, for example, think the war is a good thing while at the same time saying her actions should have been allowed, or think the war is a bad thing while at the same time saying she was acting inappropriately.
I don’t know if I’d agree with you there. I mean, it’s true that the State of the Union doesn’t have any special significance under the Constitution, and that the president isn’t required by law to stand up there and make a speech, but there’s a long tradition of the president doing just that. The SOTU has special significance because tradition has endowed it with such significance, and protocol and unwritten rules have developed surrounding it. Just because these aren’t statutory or Constitutional doesn’t make them any less real.
SOTU Drinking Games.
Congress really should make the day after the president’s speech a national holiday.
I would agree with you if, at any time during my life, any president of either party had ever used the SOTU as anything other than a jingoism session in front of a largely captive audience.