Walking through Washington DC’s Amtrak-owned Union Station last week on my way to appear on Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs show, I passed by the Making History shop, where my jaw hit the floor.
Coming on the heels of the late-August unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on The Mall, the retailer’s first display window appropriately featured MLK (and, questionably, the Obamas) as below:
But as I continued walking past Making History’s next window, I was startled to see the display below:
According to Amtrak, 90,000 people pass through Union Station every day. No doubt many thousands pass by Making History, including many impressionable children. Making History, with its real clear politics, should be renamed Fomenting Defamation.
Did anyone bother to go into the store and find out if there were tee-shirts with right-leaning or neutral text? Was there anything on display that might offend anyone other than a Tea Party member? Was there anything that might be offensive to an African American, Hispanic, or gay American? Was there anything that seemed to rely on the First Amendment guarantees? If so, I’m shocked. I thought all of that Bill of Rights business, that makes us all so uncomfortable, was a thing of the past….
Private retailers still have a right to market offensive merchandise like this, even as a tenant at the Amtrak station. The appropriate move is protest, and notification to the owner of the store that we will not do business with them as long as they exhibit and sell such merchandise. Hit them at the cash register.
We the people own this station since Amtrak is STILL owned and run by the US government. I don’t care what your political persuasion is, this kind of divisive, hateful message should not be displayed in OUR train station.