WASHINGTON, June 22, 2012 — The courage and honor of the U.S. Armed Forces are occasionally besmirched by louts who think it’s funny to urinate on dead Taliban or live Iraqis. Not only are they crude, they’re stupid. They forget that friends and enemies alike have internet access, they post photos of themselves being crude and stupid for all the world to see, and their fellow soldiers have to deal with the aftermath from furious people with explosives and guns.
They’re like “girls gone wild,” who never give a thought for what happens when parents and potential employers see them drunk, stupid and naked, captured forever on digital media, except that they destroy more lives than their own.
Girls and boys went wild in the White House last week. So besotted were they with the chance to hang out with a president who really gets and loves them, they found President Reagan’s portrait, made out underneath it, and “flipped it the bird.” And so stupid were they, so drunk on the moment, they took pictures and put them on the internet. They posted them on Facebook and wrote, “F**k Reagan,” and “star wars … up yours.”
A Marine Corps band, toughened professionals to the bitter end, bravely played show tunes in the background. They might have preferred to use their instruments to make less beautiful music.
There’s little to be added to the story of the pictures these gay activists took. President Obama showed abysmal bad taste when he invited them to the White House, or his staff showed bad judgement in not telling him that they were a bunch of urban hillbillies. It’s certain that had he known, Obama would have found a reason to not invite them. Now he gets another meme shooting around the internet to add to the one that says he thinks of the White House as his party pad, not as a place of huge historic and emotional significance for the American people.
___________
Read also Birdiegate: Gay activists shame White House, give Reagan the middle finger
___________
The president to whom these activists so crudely showed disrespect was a man far classier than they, one who would never have dreamed of dishonoring a place he considered almost sacred, especially not for anything as petty as mocking his enemies. Every president, from Washington to FDR to Reagan to Bush, Clinton and Obama deserves respect within the White House. Calling Reagan a “killer with blood on his hands” is protected speech, even in the White House, but doing it in the White House isn’t just disrespectful to every president, it’s odious and disrespectful to Americans in general. It’s also incredibly, abysmally stupid.
Anyone who wants evidence that gays aren’t like the rest of us need only download the pictures that these gays and lesbian activists helpfully put online. They were taking out their frustration, or showing heartfelt anger at a man who presided over the AIDS epidemic? Newsflash: He died a decade ago, and his presidency ended over a generation ago. That’s not heartfelt anger; it’s psychosis. Frustration to the point of no judgement over crab cakes to the music of Barbra Streisand in the White House is so silly that it’s laughable.
Unlike “girls gone wild” and urinating grunts, the people posing in front of Reagan’s portrait look old enough to know better. They prove the saying, “when you’re stupid it’s for life.” Indeed. They’ve created an ugly image problem for the generals of the gay rights movement who should move quickly to dishonorably discharge them, and also for the man who was foolish enough to honor them with a White House reception. Gays around the country had nothing to do with this and will be justifiably dismayed, and they should have our condolences, like people cursed with uncles who show up nude at their dinner parties.
For Obama, no condolences. He’s never shown much sense of restraint himself, and if this causes him heartburn, he set himself up for it. The culture that made this arrogance seem good to the gay pride activists of Philadelphia isn’t gay culture, but the same self-centered, libertine culture that created President Obama, the most arrogant man in the world
James Picht is the Senior Editor for Communities Politics and teaches economics at the Louisiana Scholars’ College in Natchitoches, La., where he went to take a break from working in Moscow and Washington. But he fell in love with the town and with the professor of Romance languages, so there he stayed. Now he teaches, annoys his children, and makes jalapeno lemonade. He’s seen a lot of infantile things in his life, but the gay activists under the Reagan portrait take the cake. He tweets, hangs out on Facebook, and has a blog he totally neglects at pichtblog.blogspot.com.
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
