Friday: Watch your step
Today: Dressed up for a tea party
It appears Wichita won’t have to change its slogan “Downtown is everyone’s neighborhood” to “Downtown is everyone’s diaper pail.”
And the community’s “tea party” protest enthusiasts won’t have to worry about literally stepping in it when they gather at the Lawrence-Dumont Stadium parking lot Nov. 4.
A used diaper anonymously dumped in the parking lot has been removed and the stadium lot was swept clean Friday night by a city vacuum truck.
Photos of the dumped diaper were featured prominently in this blog’s coverage of a disparaging comment about the Lawrence-Dumont parking lot made last week by MSNBC “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann.
Olbermann cited the L-D lot as one of several examples of lame venues for tour stops for the “Tea Party Express” bus.
Since some readers have accused Wichitopekington of “quote mining” the Wichita reference and missing the point of Olbermann’s overall comment, here it is in its entirety:
“Tea Party Express II launches this weekend, coming to 38 cities according to its press release; 37 on their Web site — Oh well. Previous tea parties so successful they now have to hold them in such venues as Wichita’s Lawrence-Dumont Stadium (pause) parking lot; Fallon, Nev.’s old Wal-Mart (pause) parking lot; a high school auditorium in Tri-Cities in Wash., Bozeman, Mont.’s Heritage Christian School (pause) gymnasium; and, in Amarillo, Texas, John Stiff Memorial Park, (pause) picnic area No. 4; seriously, picnic area No. 4. Don’t interrupt the outing in area No. 3, please.”
We’ve e-mailed the show’s producers to ask for a clarification on what exactly makes the L-D stadium parking lot an unlikely location for such an event; we’ll pass along any response we receive.
Editing note: Eagle Sports Editor Kirk Seminoff points out that Lawrence-Dumont Stadium should be hyphenated — despite the lack of hyphens in the stadium’s own signage — because it’s named after two people, city pioneer R.E. Lawrence and local baseball pioneer Hap Dumont.
Wichitopekington also found historical precedent — from the left side of the spectrum — for holding bus-related political protest activity in local parking lots.
When the “Bush Legacy Bus” — dedicated to mistakes and failures of the Bush Administration — came to Wichita in October 2008, it staged out of two parking lots, at the Plumbers and Pipefitters union office downtown and at the Machinists union office in South Wichita.
20 Comments
Too bad. Now the tea-baggers will have to bring their own diaper.
Bth,
They’ll certainly be bringing something to fill it with.
Hahaha! Loved the article. Does this mean Wichita is officially cleaned up? Let me look out my window… Uh, no. There is something poetic and alive about the juxtaposition in a town (Wichita) where the people are a funky mix of academic liberals and international students from the university mixed with immigrants from other states (thanks to the Air force) and the entrenched white bread conservative Kansans that think an exotic vacation is 3 days in Branson. It’s a dirty messy town, and I like it here.
academic liberals
In other words, idiots.
wow i bet most professional newspapers don’t try to make a simple statement about holding a little fake grass roots “protest” about not allowing the government to control a government health care program held in a parking lot in a small town, and try to turn it into a really big national issue.
go ahead make the city look as backward as possible. .
I say the diaper is still there and this picture has been photoshopped, like when Trotsky’s image was removed from the image of Lenin’s rally.
To paraphrase Chairman Mao Zedong, on November 4, “Let a thousand diapers blossom!”
I say Dion Lefler went down there,and removed the diaper. Just too squeeze one more day out of a story that isn’t a story. Dion,they pay you to write this? You should be ashamed!
The Tea Party Express subtitle is “Countdown to Judgement Day.” Is the Lord coming to Orlando on the final stop of the tour, or what?
Every time I see a discarded, messy diaper, I will think of Keith Olbermann.
that diaper was a symbol of a liberal. now if just all liberals would just disappear like the diaper did, the world would be a better place.
One would think that Lefler is related to Glenn Beck or employed by Faux News. This has been a non-story. If Lefler has actually reported what Olbermann said, instead of a lie that Olberman dissed Lawrence Dumant, this wouldn’t have appeared in the paper. I do think that the Eagle has become more sensational and less truthful in its reporting overall. That’s why I gave up my subscription. When they want to return to real journalism, I’ll probably re-subscribe.
“if just all liberals would just disappear” Pinochet tried that in Chile….
I’m glad to see Senator Vitter is cleaning up after himself.
I saw Maggotpunk and HappyHeathen using it for a heated game of kick the can. Winner got to put it back on.
HO, you’re a barrel of laughs. Like I said, you’re at least good for kicks.
Plumbers, plumbers, plumbers. Frankly I like any story that has the words plumbers or toilets in it.
And they say this is not a one horse town! They have been riding this dirty diaper and stupid story into the ground for long enough. How about some real reporting such as how much did we the taxpayers have to pay so those folks could go down to Chattanooga Tenn? But in southern talk the Visioneering fact-finding group and the City Council, bless their little hearts are doing the best they can.
that diaper is what were protesting about— whats in it,is what you liberals are full of
I’m glad that someone decided to pick up and dispose of the diaper.
Jayd041
One Trackback
[...] Diaper disappears in Olbermann/Lawrence-Dumont parking lot place … [...]