Kids sing National Anthem at memorial; gubmint says illegal

Something happened two months ago that, by the reckoning of most "non-Elite" Americans, should have been a newsworthy story. Not headline, but newsworthy.

I never heard a single word about it. And neither did you.

Now, two months after the fact, NBC's Washington DC station was the first non-Fox outlet to run the story. (Fox had run it two days earlier.)

Seems some highschool students--members of the conservative Young America’s Foundation-- were visiting DC and the Lincoln memorial. Perhaps one was suddenly hit by the historic significance of the place or by Lincoln's writings, but in any event someone started singing our national anthem. The others joined in.

Stirring stuff, eh? Apparently some of the nation's kids still have strong American values.

A very inspiring and uplifting thought, eh?

Which, of course, means that the gubming had to stop it. Sure enough, in a matter of seconds--one of the students said they'd gotten through a couple of lines--a member of the U.S. Park Police ran over and ordered the students to cease. Their impromptu singing, he said, constituted a "demonstration," and was therefore illegal.

Specifically, FoxNews reported that the park cop claimed that the students were "were in violation of federal law and their impromptu performance constituted a demonstration in an area that must remain 'completely content neutral.'"

PP Sgt. David Schlosser said, "The area they were standing in and singing is an area that is restricted for this type of activity. The United States Park Police is absolutely content-neutral when it comes to any sort of demonstrations in these areas."

Uh-huh. Nice Ratherization there, pal.

Sgt. Schlosser then explained, “It’s not the content of their activity – that being the national anthem – it’s the location,” he said. “A couple steps and it would have been no problem whatsoever.”

Nice--a "double-Rather" with trivializing twist!

Am I the only person who thinks that if they'd started singing the national anthem a hundred meters away-- "a couple steps" in gubmintese--the USPP would have had some other bullshit reason why they needed to STFU there too?

Even Fox missed this story when it happened (25 June), only picking it up on 9 August. Two days later--that would be yesterday--the NBC station put the story on its website. (There's no indication on the site that they broadcast anything about it.)

Fox probably noticed because on June 29th one of the students posted a video of the event on YouTube.

Of course the fact that Fox broke it first couldn't possibly have had a thing to do with the NBC station picking it up, right?

Okay, kidding aside: Obviously this isn't a big story--no one was killed, no sex, no way to bash BP, so...BFD. And in fairness, the PP didn't issue any tickets. In fact the students decided they'd sing the anthem anyway, and proceeded to do so.

Wow! Civil Disobedience! Hasn't that always been newsworthy in the past? But not now, apparently.

All this story would have done was made viewers/readers think more critically about our current government.

Lord knows we can't have that.