Definition of decorum not in many tourist vocabularies

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Last week, two Massachusetts women lost their jobs for a failed attempt at humor in Arlington National Cemetery. People who were particularly offended mounted the effort to have them fired. 
If only it were the first act of disrespect at Arlington, I would be able to offer up more outrage. But I seem to have grown desensitized to public stupidity.
From the self-absorbed people who are unaware of their surroundings at even the most sacred sites, all the way to the forgotten FBI investigation of the mishandling of human remains at Arlington, the Facebook frenzy over this random act of brainlessness seems somewhat disingenuous.
Maybe I’ve just been conditioned to expect people to act as if every tourist attraction — even if it’s a war memorial or national cemetery — is a cool ride at Disney World.
Here’s what happened last week to prompt the firings: Lindsey Stone was hunched next to a sign in Arlington cemetery that reads “Respect and silence,” holding up her middle finger and pretending to shout, while her friend Jamie Schuh snapped a photo. The “humor” was that they were challenging authority, as they are apparently wont to do. 

​And then they did what seems to be the typical next step for those who don’t think things through: They posted it on a social media site, for all the world to see.
More than 30,000 people joined a Facebook group demanding they be fired, and 2,500 signed a petition on Change.org. The women’s employer, a nonprofit that assists adults with disabilities, first put them on unpaid leave, then terminated them after the increasing public outcry.
And while the women had the legal freedom to create their joke, First Amendment rights do not protect people from losing their jobs for doing or saying dumb things. 
The women have apologized and told the Boston Herald they had only intended the photo as a “visual pun” in response to the sign, not as a disrespect for service members, and some service members have defended their freedom to act as they did. 
Many of the people who signed the petition have a military connection, so the signers’ indignation would seem to be rooted in their understanding that Arlington is not only the historic home to thousands of veterans but also an active cemetery, burying an average of 100 people a week, many of them in Section 60, the area reserved for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is normal to spot funeral caissons or hear the echoes of 21-gun salutes.
Arlington is called “our nation’s most sacred shrine.” It is referred to as such on a sign at the entrance (not the sign in the Facebook photo), which also reads “Please conduct yourselves with dignity and respect at all times. Please remember these are hallowed grounds.”
You’d think it were written in Sanskrit.
As someone who has visited Arlington National Cemetery dozens of times, I believe that disrespect and lack of dignity are commonplace. I’ve also seen it at different memorials across the nation and 4,000 miles from Arlington at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The women who created the frenzy did so by self-publishing their callous gesture. But they are no more offensive than those who lounge around on the marble steps at the Tomb of the Unknowns as if they’re on the lido deck of a Carnival cruise. 
They’re not any worse than the hundreds of people I’ve seen over the years at the tomb’s changing-of-the-guard ceremony, the ones who are talking and texting and joking and laughing and refusing to turn down their insufferable ringtones. 
You can watch YouTube videos of honor guards at the tomb, stopping to silence others who can be heard in the background, unwilling to shut their traps. The guards usually say, forcefully, “It is REQUESTED that everyone maintains a level of SILENCE and RESPECT!” Then the obnoxious people usually become forcefully quiet.
My family and I were once walking downhill on Roosevelt Drive in Arlington National Cemetery when a preschool boy stepped out into our pathway, clutching a folded American flag to his chest. 
We looked toward the adjacent section and saw a young woman dressed in black, holding a baby in a carrier, standing with another person at the new grave. The folded flag had been offered with the thanks of a grateful nation.
It was horrifying to realize that the woman had just buried what we assumed was her husband and the children’s father. And it was shameful that people were traipsing by and laughing and shouting within a few hundred feet of that woman’s worst day. 
On one hand, the fact that more than 4 million people are allowed to visit Arlington each year help remind people of the true cost of war. I just wish that more of them would realize that a cemetery -- any cemetery -- is a place of mourning and respect, and that not everyone needs to hear their inane conversation about where they should pick up pizza for dinner.