His Bird in the Hand Didn’t Win Votes

There is good news from the Murder Capital of America.

No, the crime rate has not gone down.

No, drug use has not been reduced.

No, it is no safer to walk the streets of Washington, D.C., now than it ever was.

But, yes, Washington Mayor Marion Barry has apologized for flipping the bird in public.

If you are unfamiliar with this particular piece of American vernacular, flipping the bird is what some call the “Single Finger Salute” and what others call the “Big Pink Flamingo.”

It is also known by the more generic “rude gesture.”

Last weekend, Mayor Barry attended a street festival in Washington where he was greeted in the usual way: He was jeered, heckled, booed and given many Pink Flamingoes.

But Barry responded by flipping the bird back at the crowd. (I believe this is called a “re-bird.”) Many people were shocked and said this was beneath the dignity of an American mayor.

I disagree. I think there is nothing beneath the dignity of an American mayor.

Barry is a trifle tense these days, which may explain his behavior. He is running for re-election while also under investigation for alleged drug use.

The campaign motto I have suggested for him--”Vote for Me While I’m Still Free!”--has met with no response as of yet from the mayor’s office. But he is probably too busy making rude gestures in public.

As soon as Barry made the gesture, local TV stations in Washington were in a quandary. If they broadcast the mayor’s gesture, weren’t they just as guilty as he?

So big meetings were held to discuss the ethical and moral implications of running the videotape. They went like this.

NEWS DIRECTOR: “Is the tape in focus?”

PRODUCER: “Yes.”

NEWS DIRECTOR: “Is it in color?”

PRODUCER: “Yes.”

NEWS DIRECTOR: “Run it.”

So the gesture ran on TV and then the newspapers got a copy of the picture from the TV stations and then they ran it.

About 275,000 people had attended the street festival and only a few thousand were able to see and be insulted by Barry’s gesture. But when the media broadcast and published the gesture, we were able to insult millions.

Don’t thank us. We’re just doing our job.

One TV anchorman I watched referred to what Barry did as an “obscene” gesture that raised a “serious question of his judgment.”

I thought this was laying it on a little bit thick. Anyone who watches football or baseball on TV sees people make that gesture all the time.

In one famous example, when one fan flipped the bird at the TV camera on “Monday Night Football,” Don Meredith explained: “That’s just his way of saying ‘We’re No.1.’ ”

But many people were very angry at Barry. One of his opponents for mayor, Sharon Pratt Dixon, held a news conference to say Barry’s gesture proved he “is now essentially politically impotent.”

Nobody had any idea what she was talking about, but it gave everybody an excuse to run the videotape of the mayor and the Pink Flamingo again.

Nelson Rockefeller made the same gesture to a crowd while he was vice president in 1976. Yes, Nelson Rockefeller was vice president of the United States. It was under Gerald Ford and America had temporarily run out of real vice presidents and Rocky volunteered to fill in until a full-time nonentity could be found.

Actually, Rockefeller was not making a rude gesture by raising his middle finger to the crowd. What few people know is that a reporter had just shouted out to him: “Hey, Nelson! It’s 9 a.m. How many billion dollars have you made so far today?”

And Rockefeller raised his finger in the international monetary signal for: “Only one, but it’s still early in Tokyo.”

Just a few days ago, Mayor Barry was forced to apologize to the public. He said he made his gesture only because of “beer-drinking hecklers” who had made rude remarks about his mother and wife.

I think it was good of Mayor Barry to apologize.

But in the future I think he could avoid a lot of bad publicity if he just resolved his conflicts with foul-mouthed, beer-drinking goons the way most of the people in his city do.

He should shoot them.