Republicans Made A 9/11 Parade Float With Smoking Towers And People Got Pissed

September 15, 2021, 11:29 am

Remember the old saying, “That’s about as stupid and tasteless as a 9/11 Memorial Parade float with smoking towers that have huge holes in them?”

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Well, that’s because it’s not a saying. But if it had been one, maybe the Valparaiso Republicans would have made better choices last weekend.

But they didn’t, which is why the good people of Porter County, Indiana, were treated to exactly such a spectacle as part of the 40^th annual Popcorn Festival. People were stunned at the tasteless display, and many were outraged as well. Several spectators took videos on their phones. 

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The Valparaiso Republicans posted their own video clip to their Facebook page. Its caption read, “We worked so hard to show our love, respect, our sorrow and respect [sic] to all the 9/11 victims, the soldiers who died in Afghanistan and our first responders. #neverforget #america”

Comments on the clip were so uniformly negative that the group deleted many of them, then limited who was allowed to comment. They also began posting “excerpts” from “emails” they had “just received” from random parade attendees, thanking them profusely for the wonderful float of smoking twin towers (which, in case you were wondering, were lit up by dry ice).

We worked so hard to show our love,respect, our sorrow and respect to all the 9/11 victims, the soldiers who died in Afghanistan and our first responders. #neverforget #america

Posted by Valparaiso Republicans on Saturday, September 11, 2021

In other video clips, people were far less forgiving. “That’s a little f—ked up,” someone can be heard saying offscreen in one such clip. The video was then tweeted by Don Lewis.

Twitter was as put off by the floats as the actual parade attendees. It was difficult to find any response that wasn’t disgusted, horrified, or some combination of the two.

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Valparaiso Republicans eventually issued an apology. Not an apology for anything they’d done, of course, including the float; but an apology for how other people “perceived” it as being “in bad taste.” Your standard #sorrynotsorry

If you need to bleach your brain of this faux apology and the image of that smoking-towers float that’s at the root of it, might we suggest this sweet tribute to the search & rescue dogs who helped on 9/11. 

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*First Published: September 15, 2021, 11:29 am