check yr shirt at the door
The WP's Reliable Source reports on a professor's experience with wearing the wrong T-shirts to Bush and Kerry events:
The experiment: A college professor wears a Kerry-Edwards shirt to a rally for President Bush, then a Bush for President shirt to a John Kerry rally.
Result: Bush people make the subject remove his shirt, then give him the boot. The Kerry people don't make a peep.
John Prather, a mild-mannered math prof at Ohio University's Eastern Campus, says he carried out this one-man study a couple of weeks ago, attending both rallies in one day. "It really was to satisfy my own curiosity," Prather, 38, told us. "It's been my opinion that George Bush has stifled dissent . . . I think John Kerry doesn't. In neither event was I a threat to anyone." Yet, he says, at the Bush rally, "I was tailed the whole time."
worm "Fuzzy Wuzzy," Luna
namecheck the Secret Service people who kicked me out of a Bush Sr. rally when I was in high school
The experiment: A college professor wears a Kerry-Edwards shirt to a rally for President Bush, then a Bush for President shirt to a John Kerry rally.
Result: Bush people make the subject remove his shirt, then give him the boot. The Kerry people don't make a peep.
John Prather, a mild-mannered math prof at Ohio University's Eastern Campus, says he carried out this one-man study a couple of weeks ago, attending both rallies in one day. "It really was to satisfy my own curiosity," Prather, 38, told us. "It's been my opinion that George Bush has stifled dissent . . . I think John Kerry doesn't. In neither event was I a threat to anyone." Yet, he says, at the Bush rally, "I was tailed the whole time."
worm "Fuzzy Wuzzy," Luna
namecheck the Secret Service people who kicked me out of a Bush Sr. rally when I was in high school
posted by Gwenda @ 8/18/2004 04:03:00 PM
2 Comments:
At 10:36 AM ,
Celia said...
I see the need for a follow up experiment involving a Nader t-shirt.
At 4:34 PM ,
Anonymous said...
A rebuttal to John Prather
1) From his experience with the security at the first rally in Cambridge, John wishes to portray the Republican party as insensitive and restrictive toward people. However, in subsequent discussions, he said that he thought that it was the Secret Service that asked him to leave. So, if anyone was insensitive toward him, it was the Secret Service, not the Republican party. The primary duty of the Secret Service is to protect the President of the United States. Therefore, John must feel that his "rights" are more important than the safety of the President.
2) The few minutes that he wore a Bush t-shirt at the Kerry rally pale to the hour-and-a-half that he wore the Kerry shirt in line for the first Bush rally. Also, it is much easier to notice an individual's clothing when they are standing in a line than when they are crowded together in a group.
3) It was the security people at the Cambridge rally that asked John to change his shirt, while the security at the Kerry rally didn't notice anything. It is entirely possible that the Kerry security people are so obtuse that they failed to notice the possible disruption.
4) John Prather is "mild-mannered"? As a co-worker of John, I can tell you that "mild-mannered" is NOT an adjective normally applied to John. He normally takes great joy in annoying various people.
5) The rallies for President Bush were private events. The ball field and the arena were rented by the Bush/Cheney campaign, and as such, they have the right to allow (or disallow) certain people into the rally. Restaurants often have signs that they "reserve the right to refuse service to anyone;" this is the same concept as applied at the rallies.
6) Private businesses and events are allowed to set their own dress code and may remove people who violate it. For example, the Cedar Point amusement park states "Clothing that might offend other guests is not allowed . . . At every entrance there are signs stating that 'Cedar Point reserves the right to refuse admission to anyone not properly dressed,'" and "Inappropriate items cannot be worn inside out." So, it can be seen that it is not uncommon for people who wear clothing that is deemed offensive to other people to be asked to leave an area.
7) John states that he wondered if he was on a watch list for the August 29 Bush rally. Besides the fact that he announced on the news that he was going to attempt the same thing again, it is probable that someone attempted to alert the rally organizers that a troublemaker was going to try to gain access to the rally. If a thief announced that he was going to try break into a bank, there are very few people who would complain that security was keeping an eye out for him. It is the responsibility of security to watch for possible troublemakers and to remove them before they can cause any problems.
8) Though John says that he wasn't going to protest or to cause trouble, only people close to him would know if he intended to remain true to his word. How many of the 9-11 terrorists told the truth when they entered the US? Did their visas say that they were going to hijack planes and kill people? I doubt it. This is not meant to imply in any way that John is a terrorist; it just points out that some people can be less than honest about their intentions.
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