On December 4, 2007, the Massachusetts Highway Department issued an order to workers to remove American flags and other patriotic tributes on highway overpasses. State officials said they are concerned the flags and signs could fall on drivers, causing an accident. The state did not have a planned time line to enforce the ban, but Mass Highway indicated that workers would be removing the flags and anything else hanging over bridges and overpasses in upcoming weeks.[[2]]
“It has nothing to do with safety,” said James Wareing, quoted by the Boston Globe. Wareing was reported as the leader of a military support group in Methuen, MA, who assembled and maintains a display dedicated to Alex Jimenez, a U.S. Army specialist kidnapped in Iraq. “Nothing has ever happened in six years.”
If it was a peace display that Mass Highway was threatening to remove, many peace activists would make the same claim: “It has nothing to do with safety.”
The Boston Globe reported that James Weiring invited Alex’s father, Andy Jimenez, to help him take down their display before highway workers could dismantle it. The display “is good for me,” Jimenez was quoted to say, “because I don’t feel alone.” The Globe reported that Jimenez’ son’s unit was ambushed south of Baghdad in May. “Now I have to pull it down. I don't know why.”
Any compassionate American would share in the sadness and concerns of a man like Andy Jimenez losing his son. (The Boston Globe didn’t offer any information about Alex Jimenez, just that his unit was ambushed in May.) However, to quote Jimenez saying “I don’t know why” is to disingenuously suggest confusion, rather than legality and public safety. Jimenez is accountable as the rest of us are for understanding citizen responsibility.
The Boston Globe took a biased position by presenting the case of a U.S. soldier purportedly kidnapped, and invoking readers’ sympathetic feelings to the U.S. soldier’s father, and to his son, the U.S. soldier. If the Boston Globe were to take a neutral position they would seek out comments from the men who are losing sons in the wars where the U.S. is fighting. Mothers and fathers from Afghanistan and Iraq are also distraught about losing children in war. Also, the Boston Globe did not seek out anyone who disagreed with the patriotic displays on the bridge, only those who agreed with it. In a whole series of articles there is not one dissenting opinion.
It is important to call out the bias involved in the reporting and slanting of these news stories. This bias is also practiced by the general population whenever passion and fear—rather than truth and reason—rule over personal interests. In my experience, and there is plenty of evidence to support my contention, no one would be allowed to decorate any Federal property with political materials—such as peace flags or peace “tributes”—that do not fulfill the war effort’s criterion of “appropriate” displays. There is a very clear public bias in favor of what some people consider “appropriate” and against others whose beliefs and values differ.
However, when Mass Highway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky said that the new edict applies to all signs on bridges over highways, she was not singling out people who would like to express their patriotism by constructing memorials to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather applying some kind of reasonable standard about public safety.
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