When I was reading what you wrote, Paul, I was tempted to believe that the purpose of elevating Rosa Parks was to celebrate her particular brand of civil rights activism. But that would have required some thinking on the part of the elected officials who were probably a little more concerned about how bad their image would be otherwise. Dave, talk about turning people into objects, it didn’t take long after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination for the riots to start.

But here we have two national figures who have been exploited in this way for decades — Rosa Parks showed up in at least one or two State of the Union cameos. It can be argued that national figures are the stuff of tokenage, and carping about it as bad form is just tut-tutting. Well, then, what about the plight of those affected by the Hurricanes? To no end did we hear about poor people specifically as though they were the only ones suffering. Yet where are those honest enough to aid them in their hour of need, after the media buzz is over?

Instead, I’m actually more curious about how few military heroes are on display, not in the rotunda, perhaps, but in the media in general. I would take a Rosa Parks any day over the violent agitators who sold out their own cause. But why not the people who fight for all of us today?