Still No Word

On the assless chaps.

But pretty much everything else except thought-bubbles is being banned from the Obama Inauguration.

WARNING: If you're the kind of pervert that just has to zoom in and look at every little pixel, then this post is "Not Work Safe".

From the Chicago Tribune:

Security turns inaugural sites into Land of No: no strollers, chairs, Silly String, or coolers

By NAFEESA SYEED | Associated Press Writer
8:51 AM CST, December 20, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — No strollers near the Capitol. No tents on the National Mall. None of that Silly String on the parade route.

That's just a sample of the items forbidden from President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration for security reasons. And while many people say the inconvenience is a small price to pay to witness the swearing-in of the nation's first black president, others are scratching their heads, trying to figure out how they will sit, snack, carry diapers or transport tired tots.

Some older people are backing out of their inaugural plans, partly because of a no-chair rule for the parade route. Parenting blogs are abuzz with complaints about the less-than-kid-friendly restrictions. Thermoses, coolers and backpacks are out at both the Capitol and the parade route.
…

All of which is entirely understandable, but the logic of it doesn’t make the logistics any less cruel to seniors who may have waited their whole lives for this moment, or parents who want their very little ones present as America makes history.

Still, this is nothing compared to the infamous gold-standard of “Bring nothing with you” public-event rules that were put in place for Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called “All Nude”

second inaugural.

I’m surprised Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss haven’t already written a seven-part best-selling series about it?


The crowds started lining up early that day;


rowdy, but cheerful despite the nipple-hostile weather.



Ambassadors, emissaries, Democratic party leaders and other VIPs

arrived later,




while Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was

discretely whisked up a private, Mistress-accessible “escalator”.


Republicans were of course invited, although historians now agree that the accommodations and codes of conduct they were forced to abide by were, in retrospect,

shamefully punitive.


Roosevelt’s address itself was historically unremarkable except for the moment when, apparently setting aside his prepared remarks, he is alleged to have referred to Herbert Hoover as

“that fucking laissez-faire ass-monkey” who “screwed us stupid in so many ways that only now, with four years of perspective, are we beginning to comprehend the scale of it” but that “if I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation” Americans could take comfort “in the sure and certain knowledge that no think tanks or institutes -- no matter how deranged they may be – would ever be shithouse-rat-crazy enough to bear the name of this epic failure”.

Sorry, Franklin.

After the speech the crowd left,

optimistic and slightly drunk.

Later, young Dick Nixon (freshly graduated from Duke University School of Law and returned to California) and young Ronnie Reagan (visiting California while doing play-by-play for the Chicago Cubs) are alleged to have met secretly with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

Having angrily broken with Roosevelt over his veto of the Patman Bonus Bill, Hearst is rumored to have struck a bargain with the politically ambitious young men: in exchange for a lifetime of clandestine support from Hearst’s vast empire, they would swear to “fuck up that son-of-a-bitch Roosevelt if it’s the last thing we ever do”.

Turns out, it was.


All of the remarkable "Group Nude" photos (in their unretouched forms) are from the "Spencer Tunick Experience" site here.