If Cindy Sheehan spends much more time in the DC metro area, she'll have to register her car and get one of those "Taxation without Representation" license plates. The ubiquitous loudmouth mother was at it again yesterday evening, successfully managing to raise a ruckus and get her face on television again, as the guest of Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) at the State of the Union address. Sheehan removed her jacket in the House gallery, revealing a message t-shirt bemoaning the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq. What happened next a matter of dispute: Sheehan says she was given the bum's rush out of the chamber and arrested by Hill police. Police say she refused an order to cover the shirt, was detained, and received a citation for misdemeanor unlawful conduct.
What no one disputes, however, is that Cindy Sheehan arrived for a formal and solemn government event wearing a t-shirt. I don't care what she had stamped on her chest. She was wearing a garment that within my lifetime was an item of male underclothing. What kind of childish twit wears a t-shirt to a State of the Union address? Wait, don't tell me: the wife of a Florida congressman. We have a bipartisan etiquette situation here, and it's time someone lowered the hammer.
You do not wear t-shirts to formal legislative functions.
You do not wear flip-flops to the White House.
You do not wear swim trunks to tour the World War II memorial.
I mean, really. Even Monica Lewinsky puts on a dress.
7 comments:
. . . and removes it so fetchingly.
Quite agree, Kathy. Dead on. Many people just don't give a damn what they look like these days. We should have the right to paintball them.
The 60's-hippy Clinton White House was very informal, particularly during his first term. A complete opposite from Reagan and both Bushes who believe(d) in the dignity of the office.
There really is no talking to some people, is there?
I mean, really. Even Monica Lewinsky puts on a dress.
Cold, Miz H, cold.
On the other hand, Ronald Reagan is well-known as never having removed his jacket in the Oval Office, out of reverence, perhaps not for the office itself, but for the gravity of what happens there.
So, too with wearing a dress while servicing the presidential...oh, never mind.
I am not villifying Ms. Sheehan for being a grieving mother. I am villifying her, and the travelling circus that accompanies her, for parlaying the sympathy to which she is legitimately entitled into the right to endlessly blather on camera about topics into which her grief gives her no special insight. If she has an opinion on how the military might better support families of the fallen, that's one thing. It doesn't make her an expert on Israeli-Palestinian conflict or constitutional law. It also doesn't confer on her the right to come to DC and get arrested on purpose any time she feels like it. The police here have better things to do, like catch the guys who stole Marion Barry's....uh....grocery money...at gunpoint.
Perhaps I will seem more evenhanded if I also state that letting MADD dictate public policy on alcohol has turned into a sorry mess as well. What was once a legitimate effort -- to get people to pay attention to laws that were not being enforced -- has become a raging puritanism of neo-Prohibition, and no one is willing to say so because no one wants to dump on grieving mothers. That is also a misuse of emotion.
On the other hand, Ronald Reagan is well-known as never having removed his jacket in the Oval Office, out of reverence, perhaps not for the office itself, but for the gravity of what happens there.
He probably forgot he was wearing one.
Stop the presses:
I agree with Kathy.
Even Jack Bauer is afraid not to.
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