Captain Oblivious

Ok, enough naming of reverends, priests, pastors, or rabbis in the subject line of this blog. Done. Fini. I promise.

This is comical and sad all at once. Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition is upset that the US Secret Service is banning crosses from the President's inaugural parade route. Why would the Secret Service ban a religious symbol? They're not. It's just another example of the over-reaction of the Christian right to their perceived persecution (seriously, what are the odds that the Bush administration, of all people, would be anti-Christian?!?). The Secret Service is doing their job:

In a December 17 directive to the National Park Service, the Secret Service mandated that signs and placards along the inaugural parade route down Pennsylvania Avenue be made out of cardboard, poster board or cloth. They may be no more than three feet wide or 20 feet long.

The directive also prohibited folding chairs, bicycles and other structures, and displays "such as puppets, papier mache objects, coffins, crates, crosses, theaters, cages and statues."

As you can see, they're clearly not banning crosses, they're banning large objects that assassins could hide behind, or that could be used to conceal a weapon. Why did they mention crosses explicitly, but not - oh, for example - enormous representations of the Star of David? Hm, maybe they think, based on their experience protecting this President during his 4 years in office, that they're going to see hundreds of crosses and zero other religious symbols on the parade route. You don't suppose maybe the Secret Service keeps track of what sort of large objects people bring out when the President comes to town, do you? Nah, why would they do that? It's not like they're professionally paranoid, after all. Pretty damn good at it, too, if you ask me. I'm no fan of George W Bush <*shocking*>, but I don't want to see him shot, either. Get out of the Secret Service's way and let them do their job, for cryin' out loud.

Not like they'll be seriously inconvenienced by this joker - the Secret Service has NO sense of humor about their job. They may try to re-word their announcement so that it sounds like they're being sensitive to the issue (or they may not), but there's no way anybody will get anywhere near that parade route with a giant cross. And I fail to see why anybody should be upset about that. Nobody's getting anywhere near the President with a giant Easter Island statue to hide behind, either.