Bush hails freedom, but can he handle a lousy T-shirt?
President Bush’s speech at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Independence Day in 2004, invoked the nation’s highest ideals: “On this Fourth of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds. … Free thought, free expression, that’s what we believe,” Bush told the crowd. Ringing words. Unfortunately, the White House advance team didn’t get the memo. Or the message. More than an hour earlier, the advance officials, working with local police, had confronted and ejected a young couple who had come to the speech wearing T-shirts that fit any reasonable definition of free expression. The front of both shirts bore the name “Bush” surrounded by a circle with a slash through it; the back of Jeffery Rank’s shirt carried the slogan “Regime Change Begins at Home” and Nicole Rank’s shirt read, “Love America, Hate Bush.” The Ranks refused demands to take the shirts off, turn them inside out or leave. Though they were on public property and not being disruptive, they were handcuffed, arrested and charged with trespass.
To those of us who grew up during the ’60s and ’70s, the Constitution is more than a mere piece of paper, and free speech is not merely a quaint, outdated concept in our post-9.11 world. Yet since 9.11, the American sheeple have stood idly by while Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © and his neoConservative thugs have gradually but inexorably worked to erode the free speech and rights guaranteed to Americans by the very Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold. Jeffery and Nicole Rank were simply exercising their free speech rights when they wore anti-Bush t-shirts to protest Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s © speech in Charleston, WV, on 7.4.04. They weren’t planning to assassinate the President; they simply wanted to express their opposition to him and his policies. Yet the local consiglieri and The Worst President EVER”s © brownshirts ejected them from the venue SIMPLY BECAUSE OF THE T-SHIRTS THEY WERE WEARING.
They didn’t threaten the President. They weren’t advocating violent revolution. They weren’t even causing a public disturbance. THEY WERE WEARING T-SHIRTS.
This is America? Is King George the Worst © so threatened by dissent that his storm troopers have to eject well-meaning Americans for the egregious, unforgivable crime of wearing a t-shirt expressing opposition to his Reign of Error? Please tell me this isn’t what y’all voted for when you blindly and reflexively voted for The Decider © ….
Thankfully for all of us- and our democracy- the Ranks won in the end. By winning in a court of law, they’ve demonstrated that this is still a nation of laws, not the domain of anti-free speech dominionist theocrats. The Constitution is more than just a sheet of paper.
NOW CAN WE IMPEACH THE LYING, MURDERING BASTARD??
