Code Pink protests Blue Angels annual show. Kind of...
While the Navy's famed flight demonstration squadron had to scrub their show, the pacifist group's demonstration squad was a true failure to launch.
The yearly Blue Angels demonstration for the Navy Academy’s commissioning week may have been hindered by bad weather, but the true failure to launch was a laughable protest by the Code Pink pacifist activist group today. A small team of participants made their way to the Annapolis city dock with fighter jet themed signs and a pink elephant inflatable, intent on delivering their message of opposition to the very existence of the US military. Their effort was a bright spot of amusement in an otherwise dreary day.
The protesters struggled to set-up their inflatable, using a small battery operated air pump. As they struggled against the unmighty beast, the activists repeatedly expressed their confusion to each other as to why the task was proving to be so difficult. Although they had also brought fighter jet shaped cardboard signs to display, the pacifists’ physical battle with the bag of air prevented them from displaying their paper airplanes effectively. The elephant itself was affixed with a sign reading “US military = #1 polluter.”
It took approximately 30 minutes until the inflatable was successfully erected, to the delight of the activists. They deactivated the air pump and one of the activists even grabbed one of the signs to pose for a photograph as a victory celebration. Onlookers had a different reaction. “Oh my god, how can you be so tacky to do that on Blue Angels day?” one woman questioned as she walked past the display.
After standing around the inflatable for five minutes, receiving little more than annoyed glances, if anything at all, and with the inflatable elephant already starting to droop, the protesters seem to have decided they’d had enough. Commenting on the chilly temperature, they began deflating the elephant and packing their equipment.
No bombardments by hostile foreign actors were observed during Code Pink’s protest against, indicating that the US military’s existence is providing effective deterrence.