Sunday, July 08, 2007

Curious Signs

The image “http://www.bluestatemedia.com/shirt_images/impeach.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
So I was riding my bike through a neighborhood near my house and I noticed dozens of yard signs calling for the impeachment of President Bush. I thought, "well, I live in Arlington: inside the Beltway, liberal enclave."
But then I thought back to the impeachment of President Clinton, and where I lived then. During the drive to impeach Clinton, I lived in central Kentucky -- where the only thing "Blue" is the grass. By the time the process was underway in Congress we had moved to Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania -- a rock-ribbed Republican suburb of Pittsburgh where registered Republicans in outnumbered Democrats about 9-1 in the precinct where we lived.
Throughout that period in the late 90s I cannot recall seeing a single yard sign calling for Clinton's impeachment. It could be that we lived then in a "yard service" neighborhood where the proper folks simply did not stoop so low as to put a tacky sign in the yard. Who knows? In any case, we were not then surrounded by "friends of Bill." I certainly heard a great deal of political opposition to Clinton's policies and disgust at his personal behavior, but even in the conservative places where we lived you rarely heard calls for impeachment that did not come from right-wing talk radio.
But these days, I see ordinary folks calling for removing the president and vice president, and see poll numbers suggesting that it's not just in my neighborhood.
Yet nobody in the mainstream media wants to mention it, and nobody among the political elite wants to touch it. I'm just asking, isn't that curious?

No comments: