Today we celebrate our 139th posting. We could have celebrated our 100th posting, or waited until the 150th posting, or done something on the 6 months anniversary of its beginning, but this being a blog, that form of expression that defies expression almost as much as it escapes intent, we decided to select a more or less random number, our 139th. There is really nothing special about this event, except that blogs frequently continue in spite of themselves, and more often than not without a proper road map to guide them forward, or even home, where ever that might be, which in the case of the world wide web could be considered to be both simultaneously nowhere and everywhere.
Therefore, to honor the largely unstructured, sometimes random moments of self-expression that we hope never, ever leaves us, we are happy to provide brief exposure (~8 minutes) to Rev. Billy's arrest during a critical mass rally in NYC this summer. We do this because the charges have been leveled, the defendant has been brought forth and the lawyers retained, and since everyone in America is still purportedly entitled to a swift and fair trial (several recent events not withstanding), this one (of Rev. Billy v. the Arbitars of Both Silly Rules and Common Sense) has begun, and if Court TV weren't still busy waiting for the 12 Spector of Doubt jurists to finish Season 5 of Law and Order, then they might cover, or at least provide a few highlights of the event "at 6 and 10."
The Rev was arrested for allegedly harrassing police officers by repeatedly shouting the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution through a megaphone at a public gathering. Listening to someone repeatedly shout over and over the same phrases, might be really annoying, but arresting them for a public performance recitation of the First Amendment would be seem to be fraught with more than a few legal issues as well working to reduce any goodwill for the mostly(?)beloved NYC Police Dept. that might be left from the tower collapses.
Readers familiar with the brouhaha around the recent visit of Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Columbia University and the introductory remarks by the university president, Lee Bollinger, to the student body may find some interesting parallels between these 2 seemingly unrelated events.