Today in motorcycle history, April 14, 1996

 

  For the second time since a controversial American flag exhibit opened last month, protesters Saturday dismantled two of the displays showing American flags draped over a toilet and placed on the floor.

  About 50 members of the “Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club” arrived on motorcycles, walked into the Phoenix Art Museum and removed the flags, said spokeswoman Amy Carr.

  After removing the flags Saturday, the veterans carefully folded them, handed them to museum officials, then stood in line to write in a comment book placed in one of the displays.  Before the flag was removed, visitors had to stand on the flag to write in the book.

  “It’s insulting to the flag, insulting to America and insulting to us,” said John McFarland, a Vietnam veteran from Phoenix.

  After an hour of what some might describe as heated debates with museum officials and other patrons, the protesters trickled out and the exhibits were reinstated.

  Museum director Jim Ballinger defended the exhibit and said its controversial pieces will remain on display as scheduled,until June 16. "What this exhibit celebrates is freedom in America," he said. "We have a story to tell and we're not going to take away a crucial part of the story."

  The always-entertaining House Speaker Newt Gingrich earlier this month jumped aboard the flag's bandwagon when he said he had declined an invitation to the exhibit, saying: “I don’t have to look at a U.S. flag in the toilet to know that it is wrong.”

 

  Good 'ole Newt.