Ted Streuli, BridgeTower Media Newswires
It was a straightforward question on Facebook this week: Why are they protesting? After all, Republicans didn’t protest in the streets when President Obama was elected – twice.
True enough, but Democrats didn’t break out the pitchforks and torches when G.W. Bush got elected – twice – not even in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote. Come to think of it, no one has run out into the street to protest the results of a presidential election. Everyone tends to lick their wounds, swear they’ll work harder for their candidate the next time around, and then go back to wondering why no one came up with the recipe for salted caramel ice cream sooner.
Now, here’s my caveat. Before last week’s election, I posted something of my own on Facebook, a journalism philosophy question about whether reporters should stay away from a child-rape allegation against candidate Trump. The accuser and witnesses were all anonymous and the alleged incident occurred decades ago, but the accused was running for president of the United States. That’s the sort of moral dilemma journalists like to kick around over a glass of rye, but the crowd on Facebook had a hard time separating the rye from the wheat. Non-journalists quickly argued the candidate’s guilt or innocence despite knowing almost nothing about the case and ignored the journalism ethics issue entirely. Lest you fall into that pit, I want this to be clearer than the display case at the Swarovski store: I am neither condoning nor condemning the protests. The protesters have a constitutional right to assemble and speak, and their views – agree or disagree – do not alter the application of the Constitution.
So put your pitchfork down for a minute. If you’re among those who think the protests are just sour grapes, if you think there is no basis other than that their side lost, it’s worth taking a minute to understand.
People are protesting because we have never voted anyone like Donald Trump into the White House.
He will be the first president who has neither military nor political experience.
Fifty years ago, Americans were astonished that John F. Kennedy was electable. And that was because he was (gasp) a Catholic. Now comes Trump, thrice married with a passel of step-siblings to his name. He hardly fits the family values mantra of the evangelical right.
Speaking of which, Melania will also take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the first first lady to have enjoyed more exposure than a bush in the White House Rose Garden. Americans are accustomed to first ladies like Laura Bush, a school teacher and librarian; Jacqueline Kennedy, a Vassar graduate and photographer; Pat Nixon, a high school teacher and government economist; and Michelle Obama, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. It has largely been a parade of well-educated debutantes. Melania Trump, who speaks six languages, dropped out of the University of Ljubljana after one year, presumably before anyone got around to explaining plagiarism.
We have never elected a man who has expressed publicly, that is to say on videotape, the vulgarities and misogyny we have heard from Trump. We can only guess what Richard Nixon might have uttered following a Billy Kilmer interception, but there was no one there with a camera rolling to record it.
The protests of the past week are what might have been if Americans had elected George Wallace or Barry Goldwater or Strom Thurmond. Come to think of it, it’s very much like that.
