Hypocrisy of Democrats exposed in Bush photo flap

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 10, 2002 | by Shelley Aamodt

As a self-employed business owner, I produce media presentations for all occasions. Last winter I donated a project to the local Republican Party that was used at the county and district levels. The procedure necessary to create such presentations requires royalty-free markets.

After exhausting the normal avenues of research, I had found few photographs of President George W. Bush available. With knowledge of legal and ethics issues, I contacted the national GOP headquarters and eventually the individual in the White House responsible for photographs.

I kindly was told that if I was unable to find photographs through the public domain, I would need to purchase them through a business. This meant they would cost me a pretty penny, regardless of the fact that the presentation would be honoring the president. Not one to be defeated, I gathered personal photos and artwork by using my creative juices and contacting friends and acquaintances.

With the Democrats' latest pettiness showing over the photograph of President Bush on Sept. 11 and my past experience, I wanted a few questions answered. Did the Republican Party purchase the photograph through the proper channels? Did the recipient receive the photographs properly? Could others purchase the same photograph for their use? The answer to all these questions is an affirmative.

Now with this information, I needed to ask myself who really was exploiting the photograph for political purposes. Could it possibly be the same Democratic Party that so fervently defended the Lincoln Bedroom sleep-overs, White House coffee parties, donations from Buddhist monks, White House office fund-raising phone calls, party-connection foreign trips, cemetery-privilege uproar, many questionable foreign campaign-money contributions and last-minute pardons for contributors?

What hypocrisy shown! How shameful for anyone even to acknowledge that they would defend such silliness, let alone report on it.

Shelley Aamodt
Menomonie, Wis.