Long-time readers know that I’ve been fascinated by the White House’s crowd control efforts for about a year now. There’s just something incredible about a president who’ll only attend public events at which audience members are pre-screened sycophants.<\/p>\n
During the presidential campaign, most observers were content to just marvel with disgust at the practice. Since the campaign is a private matter, however, the consensus was that Bush was free to exclude whomever he wished. (I argued<\/a> that these private campaign events actually cost local taxpayers considerably, but that’s another matter for another day)<\/p>\n The campaign, as we all know, is over, but the practice continues. Michael Froomkin noted<\/a> yesterday the latest incident<\/a> and wondered what can be done about it.<\/p>\n A [University of Arizona] student was banned from attending President Bush’s Social Security forum at the Tucson Convention Center yesterday.<\/p>\n UA Young Democrat Steven Gerner, a political science and pre-pharmacy sophomore, said he and three other Young Democrats had been waiting in line with their tickets for about 40 minutes when a staff member approached him and asked to read his T-shirt.<\/p>\n Gerner was the only one of the four wearing a UAYD T-shirt, which read, “Don’t be a smart (image of a donkey, the Democratic Party symbol). UA Young Democrats.”<\/p>\n Gerner said the staffer, who refused to provide his name, asked for Gerner’s ticket and crumpled it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m so used to these kinds of incidents that I’m no longer surprised by how insane they are, but Froomkin is right, these Gestapo-like practices are due — indeed, they’re overdue — for some kind of legal challenge. As Froomkin put it:<\/p>\n Taxpayers paid for this event — it’s not a campaign rally. And I don’t care if the White House says it’s over-zealous local people doing this — first of all there’s a pattern and practice of this behavior at Bush events. Second, if it is unsanctioned then taking the ticket and ripping it up is a criminal act. Let’s see a prosecution, please.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Quite right. Maybe it’s time to pursue a challenge to this in a more serious, organized manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Long-time readers know that I’ve been fascinated by the White House’s crowd control efforts for about a year now. There’s just something incredible about a president who’ll only attend public events at which audience members are pre-screened sycophants. During the presidential campaign, most observers were content to just marvel with disgust at the practice. Since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nIn this UA example, a student at a public university had a ticket to see his president speak on public property on a matter of public importance. The student was not being disruptive; he wasn’t even in the door yet. But someone — whether it was a university staffer or administration official is unclear — denied him entry because he was wearing a Democratic shirt? At a campaign rally this would be outrageous. At a local “town hall” meeting, it’s an attack on the principles of our democracy.<\/p>\n