perfidy

Later that same day, as we continued through the exhibitor tent, we encountered the 101st Airborne’s booth. There we met a very nice young sergeant, who offered to paint John’s face. Not in the sissy manner of most children’s activities, but with camo paint. Here you see the sergeant, and the result:

Murdoc:

Having gotten our fill of things military, the next item on the agenda was a protest on capital hill. When my wife was pregnant with John, she (being the kind of person she is) conducted a thorough, not to say obsessive research project on all things related to child birth and child rearing. Whilst examining the topic of breastfeeding, she got on some breastfeeding email list and they had informed her that they were mounting a PR event next to the Cannon House office building.

It seems that a representative was sponsoring a bill to modify the civil rights law to include protection for breastfeeding mothers in the workplace. Aside from, (I assume) a normal distribution of gender in the fifty or so children there with their mothers, my presence accounted for half of all male participants. Also present were a goodly amount of comfortable shoes, caftans and high tech child mobility devices. While I couldn’t hear anything the representative or any of the speakers said thanks to a substandard sound system, it was my understanding that the aim of the gathering was to amend the law to prevent breastfeeding mothers from being fired for using mechanical breastpumps in the workplace, and to provide tax breaks for companies that provide special rooms for that purpose. I suggested that they be called lactatoriums, but no one was impressed with my creativity.

I was very disappointed in my wife, however, when she removed the camouflage war paint from John’s face. She felt that it might offend some of the more granola-munchy of the participants. My view, based on personal experience, is that loving breasts and loving your country are hardly incompatible, but again my input was not well received. I got strike three when I was not interviewed by the attractive ABC reporter, and was hence unable to use my line, “While I have not had any personal experience with breast feeding in over three decades, I stand four square behind the woman’s right to breastfeed.” Breastfeeders may have won a great victory, but the experience was a bit of a letdown for me.