{"id":26395,"date":"2011-09-04T11:28:09","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T15:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26395"},"modified":"2011-09-04T11:29:04","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T15:29:04","slug":"the-secret-service-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26395","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Service and me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been debating whether or not I wanted to tell this story because i didn’t want to seem to be an asshole with a problem towards authority figures, but I guess it needs to be told. i was at the President’s address to the American Legion Convention<\/a> last Tuesday. When the national Commander began his introduction of the President, Mr. Wolf grabbed his camera and went to the front of the convention hall to take pictures. I knew two of us going to the front would probably put security on edge, so I stood up and walked six feet in front of our “bloggers’ row” table where I could get better shots with my telephoto lens.<\/p>\n

I stood there for a minute or two snapping pictures of the prez from about twenty meters away when this Secret Service agent walked up to me and said “I can’t let you rush the stage”. I looked at him and saw his little Secret Service lapel pin and replied, “OK, I won’t”. He responded forcibly “Sir! I can’t let you rush the stage!” I replied that I wasn’t, I was standing fifty feet from the stage. he again said “Sir! I can’t let you rush the stage!”<\/p>\n

All the while he was talking to me, other people were rushing the stage a foot or so behind him. I said “I don’t understand what you’re saying, but obviously, you want me to do something different than what I’m doing right now, so please tell me what you want me to do”. He said “Sir! I can’t let you rush the stage!”<\/p>\n

It started sounding like South Park’s Uncle Jimbo saying “They’re coming right at us” right before he shoots animals, so I started paying more attention to his gun hand and I asked him his name. He toldme that I couldn’t stand six feet closer to the president than “blogger’s row” because I wasn’t “credentialed media” and that he stopped because he didn’t know who i was – hinting that now he knew who I am. Then I made my way back to my seat through the crowd that was rushing the stage.<\/p>\n

The Secret Service agent came over to the blogger table and told me “You can take pictures”, I said “Excuse me?” and he repeated the statement. I replied “I know that, that’s why I couldn’t understand why you were being such a dick.” <\/p>\n

He stood there looking at me for a minute turning redder while I kept my eyes on his gun hand. Then he lectured me on being “unprofessional”, but I wasn’t really listening, I was more interested in what his gun hand was doing and trying to type my post and listen to the president.<\/p>\n

So that’s the whole story. If you think I was giving a LEO a hard time because I’m the dick, well, fine. I was doing my best to hold my temper because nothing makes me madder than security people who think that the most important part of their job is harassing innocent citizens to make it appear as if they’re doing their job. <\/p>\n

If I had been rushing the stage, I would have understood his concern completely, but that wasn’t the case. If he had been telling me not to rush the stage, I would have understood that as well. But he was talking to someone in his earpiece making it appear as if I was trying to rush the stage despite his warning…and that was the last thing on my mind – that’s why I bought a telephoto lens on Monday to avoid the Secret Service. <\/p>\n

Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have called him a dick, but it was the mildest term that was passing through my near-empty head at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been debating whether or not I wanted to tell this story because i didn’t want … The Secret Service and me<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}