DON’T REIN IN OUR PARADE : Roses Are Red; Violets Are Blue; the Politically Correct Want a Parade, Too.

A moment of bemused pity, please, for the earnest white suits at the Tournament of Roses house, the mansion that chewing gum built, a lovely dinosaur of the Plutocratic Age set among the condos of Orange Grove Boulevard.

The news about the coming New Year’s parade has had the ring of discovery to it. In 1492, Columbus sort of discovered America, and, in 1991, Rose officials discovered that not everybody is thrilled about that. Thus, their choice for grand marshal--a descendant of Admiral Columbus, whose arrival heralded the subjugation of indigenous Americans--will share the honors with a Native American whose forebear helped defeat General Custer at Greasy Grass Ridge. A modern balance has been righted, if not an ancient one.

Rose officials did not intend the parade theme “Voyages of Discovery” ironically. Irony is not in the Tournament’s toolbox. Irony does not come across on television. Irony is not easy work the morning after New Year’s Eve.

When anti-war protesters threatened a roadblock of Colorado Boulevard for the 1972 parade, then-Tournament boss Max Colwell said composedly, “Everybody tries to get into the act with us. We get a lot of exposure, and they see an opportunity to display their cause, but we won’t allow our thing to be used by anybody, good cause or bad cause.”

Hate to burst that rosy bubble, but I’d swear there was a cause even before there was a parade: Southern California boosterism--the 19th-Century flaunting of a lifestyle that beat Michigan’s and Indiana’s all to hell. Then the theme broadened to embrace the American Way of Life incarnate, or rather, in carnations. The nation’s Mother of the Year rode on a float. The grand marshals were mostly white, mostly males, mostly holders of power or arbiters of standards. And soon enough, the harmless and self-absorbed enterprise of gluing dead vegetable matter onto large, wheeled vehicles became that most shining of American traditions--a competitive, even commercial, enterprise.

Then the first cracks appeared. In 1965, the year of the Watts riots, the Tournament changed the way the Rose Queen and court were chosen; critics said it didn’t reflect the student population, a polite way of saying it was too white. In 1969, clergymen demanded that equal time and money be spent in ghettos and barrios; the white suits answered serenely, “In a world of ugliness and hate, everyone should be thankful that there is one organization dedicated to creating beauty and happiness.”

The early ‘70s gave officials the fantods. University of Michigan students wanted an anti-war halftime show. Stanford’s student body president wanted to march for Angela Davis. Women’s rights protesters did demonstrate, against “sexist” Grand Marshal Billy Graham. But only one moment betrayed the cause-free parade, when, aboard Los Angeles’ float, Miss Watts smiled like a beauty queen and raised a clenched fist like the Ghost of New Year’s Yet To Come.

By 1980, it came to light that even three Caltech Ph.D.s had quibbled with the annual genteel fiction that a million people stood gaping along the parade route. It was calculated that, at best, a half-million could cram the Crown City’s sidewalks.

First the new math; now the New World. The unprecedented compromise with Native Americans that must have looked to the Tournament like peace at last was only a separate peace. Where, they must surely be asking behind the Tournament house walls, is this going to stop? Not at Colorado and Orange Grove. Not so long as floats roll down public streets in front of cameras in Southern California. Those who devote their lives to the parade’s secular priesthood yet brush off critics with a disingenuous “it’s only a parade,” must be reminded repeatedly that visibility makes for responsibility.

Then again, to get into a swivet over all the blandness and richness is to make the parade more important than it is. Sure, public spectacles ought to show who the public is. But to expect something as flimsy as the Rose parade to bear so weighty a burden makes us all look as inconsequential as . . . oh, a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon.