Parade for Osama bin Laden too

A good response to Jessica Peck Corry's column on Columbus Day:Here's an example. I am not suggesting a moral equality between my example and the Columbus parade, however the emotions stirred in most people who read this example will probably be similar to those stirred in people who oppose state-sponsored celebration of Columbus etc.

Imagine Denver has a parade to celebrate the state holiday OBL day. OBL is an important figure in history because he helped our country repulse the communist invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. OBL was trained by, paid by, and worked honorably with the CIA in this effort. OBL is Arab, and many of the OBL parade organizers say the parade is a celebration of Arab people, not a celebration particularly of OBL himself, that is, Osama bin Laden.

In the parade which is supposedly not about celebrating the terrorism of OBL or about celebrating attacks on the USA, is a float. On this float is a scale model of burning, smoking, World Trade Center towers next to the figure of OBL himself with a "thumbs up". Even with this float, the fiction that the parade celebrates Arab people and not anti-US terrorism is repeated even by Good Democrats.

After a multi-year, multi-faceted effort to get the state to stop sponsoring the OBL holiday, including entreaties to City Council and the Colorado State legislature, protesters sit in the street in the parade route.

I am not saying people should feel that Columbus Day and OBL Day are morally comparable--only to hold this in your mind--and re-read Corry's piece. Notice how she describes the protesters and their legal team in this light. If this fiction actually happened in America, we'd probably call the protesters heroes rather than shallow attention-seeking arrest junkies.