One Brick Short

Mixed emotions are so, well, damn mixed.

The local protest wing of the Peace Movement is reorganizing and reenergizing in the wake of yesterday’s announcement by Monticello that it will limit to 1,000 the number of people from the general public who can attend the July 4 Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony.

For those of you living under rocks or extreme deadlines, George W. Bush—he’s the current president—took the Monticello folks up on their standing invitation to sitting presidents to come and speak. This has riled the peaceys who are anything but peaceful when it comes to Bush. Talked to a few yesterday and boy, are they riled.

Can’t really blame them. I don’t care for the man myself and I voted for him—once.

I tend to disagree with the idea of protesting someone elses naturalization ceremony. I think that, were I becoming a U.S. citizen, the honor of having a president speak at my ceremony would mean more to me than previously scheduled speaker, Ken Burns, although as a born-American I think I’d rather listen to Ken Burns,

With the planned closure of Route 53 during the ceremony and the limiting of tickets, the Peacefuls are out to get in. They plan on getting in line like everyone else, as many as possible, at 7 a.m. tomorrow to get the maximum four tickets each to get into Tommy J.‘s place.

It doesn’t seem right for a bunch of born-ins to be grabbing the sworn-ins’ ceremony for the born-ins’ political means, but hey, that’s politics and that’s America. I can’t argue with their right to snitch as many tickets as possible—I can say it’s tacky, tasteless and very, very annoying and perhaps even worth fisticuffs—but I can’t argue with it. They have a right to dress up like naked chickens and stalk the sidewalks passing out pamphlets, if they want.

Those who oppose the anti-Bush political views have the same rights, although I haven’t heard of anyone planning on using them. The local GOP has said they won’t turn the ceremony into a political battleground.

Hey, it takes all sorts. There’s red and blue in the flag and whole lot of white in between, not unlike a very colorful Oreo cookie. Dang, now I’m hungry.

Anyway, Peaceables are planning a protest at 8 a.m. on Friday at Quarry Park and are encouraging posters, signs, costumes, banners, props. None of those will be allowed at Monticello, however.

They’re also phoning Monticello, calling The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private nonprofit, owns and operates Monticello, asking them to uninvite Bush. That’s not going to happen at this point, although the foundation will likely reconsider their standing invite to sitting presidents.

No matter what happens, it’ll be good street theater with angst and anger and you want to miss it. Guess I’ll need to stand in line for tickets. This could be a lot of fun to watch.