To the Obama administration, it must have seemed like a no
brainer to add the “We
the People” widget to the White House website in September
2011. The forum is supposed to facilitate the right of the people,
guaranteed by the First Amendment, to “petition the Government for
a redress of grievances.”
The White House even added that, golly, as long as enough people
sign said petitions, someone in the administration — not the
president, you understand, but someone important who works in
government, probably higher than an intern — will make a formal
reply.
So when British CNN host Piers Morgan started turning his show
into a one-man crusade for gun control laws, some of those American
citizens got the idea of petitioning the U.S. government to deport
him to jolly old gun-controlled England.
Morgan replied in a remarkably spiteful column that they needn’t
bother. If the U.S. doesn’t start to seize guns, he’ll likely take
his mic and go home without.
(Not bloody likely, by the way. Morgan would be radioactive in
the British media over allegations that he okayed phone-hacking as
editor of the Daily Mirror.)
Since the Morgan petition gathered enough signatures, the
response fell to professional scold White House press secretary Jay
Carney. The former Time Magazine bureau chief
tut-tutted to petitioners, “Let’s not let arguments over the
Constitution’s Second Amendment violate the spirit of its
First.”
The other petition most immediately in the news was responded to
by the Office of Management and Budget’s Paul Shawcross. In a
letter titled “This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking
for,” Shawcross assured petitioners that the White House “shares
your desire for job creation and a strong national defense” —
however, a government-funded Death Star just “isn’t on the
horizon.”
It would not undertake this initiative — and, again, I’m
quoting an official White House response here, swear to Allah —
because “construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost
more than $850,000,000,000,000,000,” and “the Administration does
not support blowing up planets.”
“However,” Shawcross added, the government is pouring a bunch of
money into the “giant, football-field-sized International Space
Station in orbit around the Earth” and that’s kind of like a Death
Star, except for the light side of the force.
And of course there were the petitions for secession immediately
after the election, and the White House’s sickeningly pious
response thereto. Commentators seized on these petitions as
evidence of red America’s rampant racism, completely disregarding
the fact that petitions for all 50 states — including that
well-known hotbed of KKK activity Vermont — were posted on the
website.
On Sunday night, the top several entries on “We the People” were
petitions to add service animals to the Americans with Disabilities
Act, a birtherite call for President Obama (“aka Soetoro aka
Soebarkah”) to resign, a plaintive cry to “ban hammers and baseball
bats,” and a call to finally “end daylight savings.”
Though the site has become a popular forum to deliver some
serious petitions to the government, more often it is being used to
punk the president — to put forward absurd propositions that, with
enough votes, the White House will be forced by its own idealistic
promise, to engage.
Eventually, I predict that the trolls will win and the website
will be shut down. Either that or they’ll turn it over to the
interns. Thank God this isn’t the Clinton Administration.
