How about on the White House tour? Is there still a White House tour? Can we flip off the ones we don’t like then?
Democracy is so boorish. When we switch, can we get something with snappy uniforms and an insistent way of showing respect?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Fox News is already covering this and by next week, we’ll be getting emails about how Obama and two gay activists took turns spitting on Reagan’s portrait.
Way back in post #42 I linked a Foxnews article. It stated that the White House was not happy with what happened. Thats how they covered it. No idea what the talking heads on their opinion shows have said.
There was a lot of misinformation about what AIDS was, how it was spread, and what it would do to you at the time. On top of that, there were mainstream voices calling for things like forcible tattooing of anyone with HIV, quarantines, and outright gloating about the fags finally getting what was coming to them. And these weren’t fringe voices - they were coming from people who were widely recognized as being influential in shaping government policy. Except that there wasn’t a government policy on AIDS, because Reagan wouldn’t address the issue. So when a guy shows up and says, “I’m a scientist from the government, and you have to close your businesses for reasons of national health,” it’s understandable that a lot of people in the gay community were suspicious that this was really just an attempt to use a health crisis as an excuse to further marginalize gays.
The president is not a king and the White House is not a church. Ceremonial deference should neither be asked nor expected in an egalitarian democracy. So far as I’m concerned, there shouldn’t even be an executive mansion. The president should get an office and a townhouse sufficient for his administrative needs and bereft of any ceremonial symbols or symbols of state or status. The Constitution should be amended to prohibit the creation or use of any symbols of office, such as presidential seals or flags, as well as any titles. The White House, should it exist at all, should be unoccupied by anyone and be open as a museum to the public.
Except even in museums, people are asked to be respectful. If someone was seen taking a picture of themselves flipping off a painting, they’d probably be asked to leave.
But unfortunately for you, it’s not a museum, and it IS an executive mansion. It’s the home of the president, and in this case, these people were invited guests, of the president. They behaved like jackasses. They weren’t here on some guide tour – it was an official invite.
I’ve spent a good amount of time in the Louvre, the Met, Moma, and the National Gallery, and although it never occurred to me to take a picture of myself flipping the bird at a painting, in positive I could have done it without anyone asking me not to, not to mention bring asked to leave. The only problems would have come from portions of the exhibit where photography was prohibited entirely. Museums ask you not to run or touch the paintings. Some of them try to maintain a quiet atmosphere. Other than that, I’ve never been in a museum that tried to enforce some form of “respect.” If there were, I would expect that it wouldn’t be likely to be in many of the popular public museums.
It’s not unfortunate for me at all and neither for the people who posted this picture, because nobody stopped them. As for it being someone’s home, it is only secondarily so. The president is a temporary lodger and none of the portraits there belong to him. The building is owned by the public as are most of its contents.
Moreover what these guys did was pure political speech, the kind given the highest protection by the Constitution. The fact that it might be considered offensive by a large number of people is an even greater reason to protect such expression.
And to top it off, this act of expression does actual harm to no one and nothing. It doesn’t hurt the painting, it doesn’t hurt the White House. And so far as I know the president wasn’t even in the room when it happened, so it can’t even reasonably be described as something that could have personally offended the president.
And to top it off, the only reason presidents have meetings like this is to massage their own personal political images. This kind of political pandering shouldn’t be protected from acts of harmless and non-disruptive political expressions by some thin-lipped, pearl clutching schoolmarm’s idea of propriety.
Flipping off a portrait in a public building should be as protected as flag burning, even more so since unlike a fire it carries with it no inherent danger.
Symbols don’t deserve protection from harmless non-disruptive symbolic acts of political expression not in a democracy. No worship. No deference. No reverence. There are no gods in a democracy, not even symbolic ones.
:rolleyes: Who is arguing that it isn’t “protected”? We’re just saying it’s juvenile, and in bad taste. It’s not a constitutional crisis when you decide to purposely fart at your grandmother’s Thanksgiving table.
Yes, but when SHE does it…
Juvenile and bad taste are perfectly fine when expressing political opinions. My favorite comedians do it all the time and I love them for it.
What shouldn’t be acceptable is dishonesty or speech that promotes racism or the like. Flipping the bird at a portrait is neither of those.
Wow. I’ve seen many cases of projection, but few where the projector simultaneously accuses someone else of a certain behavior and exhibits that behavior himself.
Anyhoo, maybe you’ll be able to read the relevant text if it’s in a relaxing shade of blue:
Well, maybe if your timescale perspective is that of a beryllium-8 atom it might seem like forever, but on the timescale perspective of politics it’s already fading into the noise.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
And Morgenstern, I don’t know about gay activists, but the words “exaggerating retard” should be forever associated with your name. At least on this board.
:rolleyes:
As a member of the gay community, I don’t feel the least bit embarrassed. Every community contains immature jerks.
This is why people are offended. You pull this shit at a function for/and in the house of, a man who has stuck his neck out further than any other president, in furtherance of your cause. You look like a douchebag. It is egregious. And it is naively disingenuous to down play it as ‘no big deal’.
In the big picture, it will be a tempest in a teapot, as panache45 is absolutely right, every movement has assholes. The gay community would be wise to denounce these particular protesters as the assholes they clearly are.
As an aside, I think it’s noteworthy that Reagan is described above - with cites! - as being non-homophobic. GWB, for all I’ve railed against him, is also reported to also be a non-homophobe. Every POTUS for the past umpty-ump years has on staff personal aides. These are the people who carry the stuff for the Prez - they work in shifts. After all, the leader of the free would can’t be seen fumbling for a pen or keys or change or a book like a normal person. Anyway, personal aides have a lot of close contact with the President, and the Prez knows them well. The article I’m trying to recall (WashPost?) was about a personal aide of GWB who was openly gay, and GWB treated him equally, and nicely, by all reports. To GWB, the staffer was just a staffer and sexual orientation did not matter to his job.
I imagine GHWB had no more issue personally with gay people than RR or GWB, but I did not hear anything one way or another. Nor would I have heard anything unless it made the media.
I think it’s a pity none of those Presidents converted their personal acceptance of gay people into policies that better supported them (and other citizens as well). Oh well, at least none of them signed the incredibly mis-named DOMA. That would be Bill Clinton (D-whatever might get me a vote this particular second). And GWB pushed for - and got - funding for AIDS work in Africa. I think the worst criticism I heard about that was he could have done more even against the opposition of his own party in Congress. Maybe, but he could have sat on his hands and done zilch at no political cost.
And now we can flip back to the original topic of this thread …
He also appointed a guy who thought that AIDS can be cured by prayer.
Everything else you’re saying is correct. But funding for AIDS work in Africa has absolutely nothing to do with gay people in the U.S. You really can’t cite this as evidence of anything pro-gay.
Typo Knig: As one of the posters who wrote apologistics for Reagan upthread:
I think you have to be pretty clueless not to notice that it’s the Republicans who pushed for restrictions on gays and Democrats who generally resisted or at worst sat on their hands. Presidents compromise: Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was an advance over what preceded it. And DOMA during the mid-1990s was pretty much inevitable: you weren’t going to have 1 state permit gay marriage, then have the rest of the union automatically fall into line.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the Democrats aren’t especially liberal: they are a coalition of liberals, moderates and conservatives. They will give the ACLU a fair hearing, but they certainly don’t follow them routinely. The Republicans, OTOH, label the ACLU “The criminal’s lobby”, and vilify its membership. Very different.
I wasn’t surprised that Reagan didn’t push for gay marriage back in the eighties - that simply wasn’t in the cards for a conservative politician, regardless of his personal beliefs, to take on his own base on a social issue. If Reagan had been silent on gay rights for eight years, it wouldn’t have been good but it would have been predictable.
But AIDS was not a social issue and shouldn’t have been treated like one. AIDS was health crisis and there was no moral issue involved in it. Diseases and natural disasters don’t play favorites - you address them when and where they happen regardless of who they happen to.
Somebody mentioned C. Everett Koop - he understood this. I don’t imagine he personally approved of homosexuality but when a disease started killing homosexuals he understood it was his job to fight the disease.
Too many other politicians didn’t get this. AIDS was a public health issue like cancer and diabetes not a gay rights issue like military service and marriage.