Don't Want Them T-Shirt Honky-Tonk Blues

Every 3 months or so I read Man/Student/Woman Arrested for T-Shirt!! Here is the quarterly t-shirt-arrest country-gone insane item.

"Jesse Brown, Vietnam vet, was having coffee at a Chicago VA hospital when arrested for his shirt. "You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt."

Technically, no protests of any kind are allowed on, near, at, in, or by a military facility, installation, property, etc. A t-shirt could be likened to a sign I suppose.

Mike was issued a citation after refusing to leave (the cop also a vet), lost his Swiss pocket knife, and was told he could pay the $275 fine or appear in court. Next time he would be booked and jailed. He's currently looking for an attorney to take his case as he plans "to sue them -- from Dubya on down."

- The cop commented to Mike that he had his "15 minutes" so likely someone complained to the cop, or maybe Mike was drawing a crowd although Veterans for Peace tees, the ones I've seen, are not crowd drawers, i.e. innocent enough with a dove logo.

I always receive Tees from my children at Xmas (what else for the woman who has everything right? Or my kids are cheap!). Last Xmas I received doubles of a couple. One, the Meet the Fuckers with Bush/Cheney pic, and the other of a figure bending over with a gas nozzle near his rear and the words "Bush's America – Taking It In The Gas." My favorite of all from a few years back, quite threadbare, is my tee of a Hitler mustachioed face of Bush.

I wear all out publicly except the Meet the F'ers. Not because of the sentiment of it, but the obscenity of the F-word which my Bible Belt neighbors might find offensive. It's not that I mind offending them but there are better ways I can trespass against them.

I also have large signs (and have since January 2001) on my home, yard, and vehicles, stating a variety of personal opinions. Another Son-of-a-Bush, or I Have 3 Sons In The Corp/What's Your Investment In Elite Oil – and Buck Fush, etc. No one has bothered me about them (yet, knock on wood).

Don't tell anyone, but since 2002 my granddaughter and I have printed anti-war, anti-BushCo, pro-peace flyers at home and in the buttcrack hours of dawn we make a run through town plastering them on poles, empty storefronts, inside newspaper vending machines, etc. We also print and carry business cards with alternative websites, peace links, etc. and quietly leave them in stores, offices, schools, windshields in a parking lot, inside books at the library; wouldn't leave home without 'em.

Had I been Mike, I would have left the scene quietly when requested, for the simple fact that there's no way I'm going to fill the coffers of the system with more revenue by paying a $275 fine. We can buy a lot of paint, posterboard, ink and paper with $275. But, each to his own.