A quartet of Illinois lawmakers have put forward a bill to amend the State Commemorative Dates Act and declare President Barack Obama’s birthday a legal holiday. Under the legislation, August 4 would not only be a day off for Illinois state employees, it would be an occasion “to hold appropriate exercises in commemoration of our illustrious president.” The Scrapbook suspects that, however appropriate a commemorative exercise it might be, Bronx cheers are probably not what the Illinois legislators have in mind.
It’s hardly unheard of for states and cities to recognize in this fashion events and people they deem important. May 22 is Harvey Milk Day in West Hollywood, and the People’s Republic of Berkeley within its jurisdiction substitutes Indigenous People’s Day for the October holiday horrifically named after a certain genocidal 15th-century Italian sailor and explorer. There are various Southern states with lost-cause commemorations, including Confederate Memorial Day (a paid day off for those on the Alabama payroll) and Confederate Heroes Day (an “optional” state holiday in Texas, in which government agencies are obliged to maintain “skeleton crews”).
It’s even possible that Barack Obama’s birthday would not be the most ridiculous public holiday in America. Another of Texas’s state holidays, after all, is LBJ Day.
But let’s look on the bright side of the possibility that Illinois will recognize Barack Obama’s birthday. One of the most fevered events of the Obama years was the dreaded government shutdown, during which we were told a day without government was a day without all that is right and good and necessary. How delightful that the president who told us a shutdown was “completely irresponsible” should be recognized, in the birthplace of his political career, by a yearly one-day government shutdown.
Which is just one of the many reasons it seems to The Scrapbook that the honor may be more than a bit apropos. How better, after all, to recognize Mr. Obama and his achievements than by having Illinois government employees get paid a whole day for doing nothing?
When Mother’s Day and Father’s Day roll around each year, the kiddies always gripe that they’re being left out: “When is Children’s Day?” they ask. Parents invariably reply, “Every day is Children’s Day.” In the same way, if the leader of the Party of Government is to be honored by letting state employees kick back in idleness, one could say that every day is Obama Day.
