We’ve seen Bush loyalty oaths and people getting arrested for wearing Kerry t-shirts to see the president speak, but the Bush campaign continues to push the envelope.<\/p>\n
This week, as Jesse Taylor noticed<\/a>, BC04 removed ticket-holders from a Bush event because their clothing included a pro-choice message<\/a>.<\/p>\n Campaign workers removed the Millers — Marvin, Barbara and Theresa — from Wendler Arena on Thursday minutes before the president’s motorcade rolled up. <\/p>\n The Midland clan’s offense? <\/p>\n Barbara Miller, a 50-year-old chemist for Dow Chemical Co., had carried in a rolled-up T-shirt emblazoned with a pro-choice slogan. <\/p>\n “I thought I might be cold,” she said of the NARAL Pro-Choice America message on the cotton shirt, size large. “I use it for running. I never even thought about the message. I just wanted to see my president.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This really<\/i> isn’t funny anymore. In other words, if you’re fortunate enough to get through the ideology checks and receive a ticket to see the president in person, and then go through security like everyone else, you may still be subject to “fashion profiling” — your attire tells Bush officials all they need to know about whether you might<\/i> try to disrupt the event. Amazing.<\/p>\n Barbara Miller said a young male campaign worker confiscated the offending apparel upon the family’s 4:30 p.m. arrival. He returned with two others and asked the trio leave about an hour later. <\/p>\n “They obviously were searching for us,” said Marvin, 53, also a Dow chemist. “And they came for us. <\/p>\n “I was probably voting for Kerry before. Now I’m 100 percent sure. Maybe I’ll start campaigning for him. Maybe I’ll start fund-raising.” <\/p>\n He said the person who took his wife’s T-shirt told them, “We don’t accept any pro-choice, non-Republican paraphernalia.” <\/p>\n It was the same young male worker, a female campaign worker and a security guard who demanded the family leave section 28 as they sat chatting a couple of hundred feet behind Bush’s stage, he said. <\/p>\n The young man accused them of “smuggling in T-shirts,” he said. The guard then grabbed their three tickets from Barbara Miller’s hand, ripped them up “violently” and told her, “They’re no good anymore,” she said. <\/p>\n “This is democracy under Bush,” she added flatly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You know what might make Barbara Miller feel better? A hilarious new t-shirt<\/a> that my friend Dr. Laniac came up with. Take a look<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We’ve seen Bush loyalty oaths and people getting arrested for wearing Kerry t-shirts to see the president speak, but the Bush campaign continues to push the envelope. This week, as Jesse Taylor noticed, BC04 removed ticket-holders from a Bush event because their clothing included a pro-choice message. Campaign workers removed the Millers — Marvin, Barbara […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nWhen asked to explain why law-abiding ticket-holders had to be removed from the event, a campaign spokesperson said “attendees suspected of aiming to spoil” the show had to go.<\/p>\n