Every Parade Needs Someone Out of Step

In my business, it’s good to be contrarian from time to time. Keeps the readers guessing, plus the boss slips a little something extra in the paycheck for every against-the-grain column.

Needing extra scratch, I’ve been racking my brain all day trying to find a way to support the Minuteman Project’s effort to crack the starting lineup in a couple of Orange County municipal parades. Laguna Beach said no for its Patriots Day Parade, held Saturday, and San Juan Capistrano delivered a similar verdict last week for its March 25 Swallows Day Parade.

Normally, I’d side with the cities, but if only because the Minutemen are down and probably feeling unwanted, I’d like to get behind them. Would it really be so bad to hear a father explain to his young children as the parade passes, “Look, kids, here come the Boy Scouts ... here comes the high school band ... and here comes the citizen’s group that patrols the borders looking for illegal immigrants.”

Why wouldn’t a Patriots Day group want them? The original Minutemen warned about the British; these latter-day Minutemen are warning about the Mexicans. True, the British weren’t looking for jobs, but that’s a distinction without a difference to a patriot. I could have made that point.

The Minutemen sued Laguna Beach after being turned down. I probably should have gotten behind that effort (which failed), if only because I don’t think I’ve ever sided against a town holding a patriotic parade. Talk about contrarian. The boss would have loved that.

I could have blasted the Superior Court judge who, in ruling last month for the Laguna Beach parade’s sponsors, decreed: “This is their parade, and they can express what they want in their parade.” I could have called the judge a Communist.

The Minuteman Project is led by Jim Gilchrist, who got 25% of the vote in a December special election to fill out the term of Rep. Christopher Cox. Gilchrist has said he might run for Congress this year, and to most people that would make him a political figure -- just the kind of thing the parade sponsors try to avoid. I could have argued, with extreme contrarianism, that just running for political office doesn’t make you political. Nobody would have seen that argument coming.

Laguna Beach’s parade is history. The only way left for me to rally behind the Minutemen is to go after the annual San Juan Capo event. This year’s parade will be the 48th and will celebrate the return of the famous swallows from wherever it is that they’ve been.

Not surprisingly, it’s billed as a homespun community thing -- full of horsemen and marching bands -- and devoid of political overtones.

Sounds like a good target for a true contrarian.

Some would call Gilchrist arrogant for wanting to impose his cause on parade sponsors. I could defend arrogance. Founding Father John Adams had more than a touch of it. I suppose Laguna Beach and San Juan Capo would have banned John Adams too.

If arrogance doesn’t describe Gilchrist, how about tone-deaf? Some would say that anyone with a modicum of good sense would realize that civic parades aren’t the place to draw attention to one of the most divisive issues in the county.

I could argue vociferously that no one doubts Gilchrist’s sincerity about the illegal immigration question and that, to the contrary, there’s no better place than a civic parade to highlight this vexing problem.

Besides, even though SJC has a significant Latino population and, no doubt, some illegal residents, why would Gilchrist or anyone else think it might put a damper on the expected jollity to have a self-appointed border patrol group in the parade?

As I see it, then, the opportunity is staring me in the face. If I truly want to be contrarian, I’d rise in defense of someone who appears to be either arrogant or tone-deaf, or both, not to mention downright impolite and rude for suing Laguna Beach.

And all in the name of patriotism.

I’m going to give this some serious thought.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana

.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.