Our entire county, islands and mainland included, numbers just over 60,000 folks. We don't get the big rock tours here. We don't even have a Target Store.
But there it was on the front page of yesterday's Brunswick News... between the three-column photo of a man dressed in a giant Twinkie suit and an article about how locals raised almost $5,000 to pay for medical bills for a police/drug dog who had been hit by a car.
(I'm not making this stuff up folks. The officer who owns the dog is quoted as saying "We're not going to have anymore problems because she's never out of my sight anymore" and, my personal favorite, "If the Red Cross put out that they needed money for the animals that survived the hurricanes , (donors) would be coming out of the woodwork." I don't mean to digress, but you really have to have the context.)
The headline reads "Famous monument tours Isles." The Ten Commandments monument evicted from the Alabama State Supreme Court Building in August 2003 had apparently been "touring the nation on a flatbed truck ever since."
(There was a girl in my high school class who did that too, but THAT is too much of a digression).
This tour is backed by "American Veterans in Domestic Defense" a D.C. based group "that advocates strict interpretation of the US Constitution." Especially and apparently those amendments that come after that troublesome first one. I would guess the group would have preferred to tour the rock on a Swift Boat, but had to deal with the aquatic limitations of starting the caravan in South Dakota ).
I have no problem with the Ten Commandments. I have no problem with courthouses. I don't believe the two are interchangable.
Thus the rock star appearances at a local Christian school for its students and an after school time there "for all youths" are right in line with constitutionally protected speech, but the mid-day appearance at a public park... gives me a bad case of moral indigestion.
The local pastor who booked this tour stop explains it this way. "The Ten Commandments was (sic) part of the writing of the Bill of Rights and the foundation of the Constitution of our nation."
(Apparently Jefferson was absent that day.)
Big Rock Mania is sweeping America. From the big start in Sioux Falls last week it went on to Hattiesburg, Slidell, Branson and Toccoa. If you can't identify the states for these burghs off the top of your head, you too are probably a wrong-headed, left-wing child of Satan.
I've marked my calendar for the public park appearance next Wednesday, secretly hoping Hurricane Jeanne derails the tour.
I'd love to see the organizers report to their insurer that they were set off-track by an Act of God.





Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs