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Scenes from the South Lawn
Quite a week at the White House, particularly on the South Lawn where it began and ended with protests within the fences of a secure compound that is supposed to be protest-proof.
In both cases, the protesters were allowed in by the White House: hundreds as guests and one as a credentialed reporter.
It began on Monday when 100 or so gay couples with children quietly made their point about what families can look like by accepting the White House annual open invitation to the Easter egg roll. The gay couples insisted it was not a protest, but they also knew they’d attract reporters and cameras who would help them make their point.
Score one for cleverness.
The second South Lawn protest was far more embarrassing for the administration. As Chinese President Hu Jintao began his remarks during a formal welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn, a woman identified as Wang Wenyi screamed at him and Bush, urging both to stop the oppression of Chinese followers of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in that country.
Wang threatened Hu, saying his “days are numbered.”
Like the gay families at the egg roll, Wang got in with White House approval. Despite the fact that she has engaged in this kind of loud protest before, Wang was granted a press credential as a reporter for The Epoch Times, a Falung Gong-affiliated publication. Nothing we could do, the White House said, insisting Wang qualified as a journalist.
Score one for ingenuity.
“In protesting in this manner, she did not act on behalf of Epoch Times,” the paper said in a statement.
But the paper also used the opportunity - as Wang had used her opportunity on the South Lawn - to push its point.
“We think the world does need to understand what might have moved a respected medical professional such as Dr. Wang to take such unconventional actions,” the paper said in its statement. “The Epoch Times has reported that, based on the statements of doctors performing organ transplants in China, in the next 11 days thousands of Falun Gong practitioners will be slaughtered in China in a particularly horrifying manner: through having their organs harvested while they are still living.” Chinese officials have denied the allegation.
Bush apologized to Hu for the incident and the Chinese leader was gracious in accepting the apology, according to White House aides. But Hu - who attracts protesters most everywhere he goes - surely felt he would be immune from them on the South Lawn of the most protected building in America.
All in all, it made for quite a week on the South Lawn, also the scene this week for Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s resignation announcement and a rare aborted takeoff of Marine One with the president on board, grounded due to communications problems.
And if that was not enough fun and games for the week, Bush - in a strange sort of wrong-way replay of an incident he endured in China last November - left a lasting impression in the form of photos of him tugging on Hu’s jacket as the Chinese leaded headed in the wrong direction during the South Lawn welcome ceremony.
The will-intentioned effort looked like something else in photos of the moment.
To some, it offered a reminder of another wrong-way incident involving Bush and China. Last November, after a press conference at a Beijing hotel Bush famously tried to walk out through a locked door, producing photos of him making a strange face and jokes about having no exit strategy.
By Friday morning on the South Lawn, as he headed off for a weekend in California, Bush was smiling and waving as usual as he climbed into Marine One at the end of quite a week in his backyard.
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