Emperor Bush

"Free speech zones" getting crowded

By ROBERT KOEHLER

CONSIDER HOW weird it's getting.

Recently in La Crosse, Wis., ticket-holders in line to

hear the President speak had to unbutton their shirts

before they could get inside, baring any secret

opinions lurking next to their hearts. Good thing,

too. A mom and three boys who harbored antiwar

sentiments almost got into the rally.

"I was wearing a white T-shirt (with an antiwar

message) underneath a black button down shirt," Sandra

McAnany writes on the Madison Independent Media Center

Web site, "and when the lady who was checking IDs saw

the white collar, she asked me to unbutton my shirt.

As she saw the writing on (it), she hollered for

security."

Some guy in a green jacket "came over and grabbed the

tickets from my hand. He said, "We don't want people

like you here" and ripped my tickets in half."

McAnany, her three sons and one of their friends (who

was, in fact, pro-Bush) were shooed off to the free

speech zone, behind the concrete barriers and the

12-foot-high Waste Management trucks.

Free speech zones! Yeah, they're over there by the

Dumpsters, well out of Presidential and, perhaps even

more importantly, media eyeshot. Everywhere the

World's Most Despised Human goes, the Secret Service

gets there first, sweeping protesters out of the way,

hustling them off in handcuffs (if necessary).

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On the Fourth of July, in Charleston, W.Va., Nicole

and Jeff Rank were arrested, cuffed and charged with

trespassing for the crime of wearing "Love America,

Hate Bush" T-shirts on the grounds of the state

capitol, where the President was scheduled to make a

speech. That day, only pro-Bush T-shirts were allowed

on the grounds. (Nicole, an employee of the Federal

Emergency Management Agency deployed to West Virginia

to do flood-relief work, was deported back to Texas

after the incident.)

Those who applied for tickets Bush's speech in

Charleston were required to supply their names,

addresses, birth dates, birthplaces and Social

Security numbers, according to the Charleston

Gazette.

Social Security numbers?

Who else here is starting to feel queasy and a little

shell-shocked? We've wound up with a President who can

only govern a rump state of smiling, cheering,

right-thinking, right-T-shirt-wearing true believers.

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And even the true believers haven't been doing enough

for him lately. The Rev. James L. Evans, a Baptist

minister, recently wrote in the University of Chicago

publication Sightings that campaign strategists for

the notoriously born-again President have handed

evangelical leaders a list of "22 duties" they need to

perform during election season.

The list includes praying for the country and the

troops, but then gets down to the secular nitty-gritty

of keeping Bush in office, obviously a task too

important simply to leave to God. Thus the evangelical

ministers have been told to surrender copies of their

church membership lists to the Bush campaign and

badger other evangelical congregations in their area

to stump for the Prez.

"The net effect of this strategy will essentially turn

local congregations into party precinct houses," Evans

writes. Even ardent supporters, he says, are

"appalled."

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For sheer brass, wow, this scheme gets an Obie. It
goes way beyond "eroding the wall between church and

state," that is, allowing a particular religion to

pull the strings of government. Bush turns that no-no

inside out, giving government leave to pull the

strings of religion. This presupposes an Iran-style

merger of church and state, with George W. as the

nation's first ayatollah-in-chief.

The arm of the state, the arm of God ! Ayatollah Bush

isn't shy about employing both to maximize his grip on

the national rudder. Last fall the ACLU filed a

lawsuit against the President's personal police force,

the Secret Service, for its widespread pattern of

violating the civil rights of protesters.

And, like God (or the Ayatollah Khomeini), the

President's power to control dissent knows no borders.

For instance, Italy's largest electric company cut off

power to two radio stations, Radio Citta Aperta and

Radio Onda Rossa, as they were about to broadcast

coverage of the protests against Bush's visit in June,

Democracy Now reported.

You know the only good news about all this? Those free

speech zones are getting awfully crowded.





"I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the

interesting thing about being the president. Maybe

somebody needs to explain to me why they say

something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an

explanation." Bush

[brent]

Thank you for that LG. I found it amusing, scary, funny, frightening, and frustrating all at once.