While the battle for the bragging rights to host the Obama Presidential Library continues to heat up some folks in Newport, Nebraska had a different take on where it should be housed.
The most popular float in this years July 4th parade was the one being pulled along by a blue pick up truck. It featured an outhouse titled “Obama Presidential Library” and featured a zombified President Obama.
The driver of the float, Dale Remmich, has said that “the float was political satire and an expression of political disgust,”and that “there was no racism involved, no hate for anyone.” No one asked him if he watched FOX News.
Here’s what one woman witnessed:
The crowd lining the streets clapped and laughed as the flatbed truck went by.
But one loud voice rose above the rest: “This is not OK,” Glory Kathurima said. “That’s not OK.”
She kept repeating herself as the float passed, she says. She started to raise her phone to take a picture of the blue truck with the outhouse on its flatbed, along with a dark figurine in overalls propped up by a metal walker.
And nailed to the sides of the wooden privy, two signs in all-black capital letters: “OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY.”
Kathurima didn’t take the photo, though pictures of the float went viral on the Internet, sparking long threads of comments about freedom of expression and racism.
She didn’t take the photo because she was too busy trying to be heard, Kathurima said Saturday. Too busy trying to answer her 9-year-old daughter’s questions about the float.
“Mommy, what does that mean? What’s so funny?”
Courtesy photo/Liz Guthrie
Oh, FWIW, President Obama is a graduate of Harvard University, no word yet where Dale Remmich was educated or if he had a library card.
This idea is not new; however, remember when this circulated in 2012?
Please…
Regional coverage:
Lincoln Journal Star
Omaha World Herald