Posted on 09/02/2009 1:53:42 PM PDT by green pastures
MADSION, Wis. -- At a busy Madison Common Council meeting Tuesday night, council members voted to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird.
The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird, reported TV station WISC.
The idea was sparked by a 1979 prank when pranksters on campus put out 1,008 of the birds.
"It sure lives in Madison lore as a really fun thing," said Wisconsin State Journal writer Doug Moe.
Moe proposed the idea in a column, and Alder Marsha Rummel brought it to the council.
"Let Madison have a little fun and laugh at itself. We've always been pretty good at that. I might suggest in these so-called tough times, a little laughter is not a bad thing," Moe said.
Not everyone embraced the idea of voting on the plastic flamingo. "I respectfully ask for this City Council to devote more time to more serious business at hand," said Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele, of District 20.
But Rummel defended bringing the proposal to the council. "We are capable of multitasking in life, and if you don't have a little fun, it's not worth living, and I spent like 20 minutes on this since April," Rummel said.
At a busy Madison Common Council meeting Tuesday night...
Plastic PINGk FlamPINGo ping...
Madison, of course, is the Moscow of the Midwest, the Berkerly of the Cheese State. Pink Flamingo is also a gay movie by Jon Waters, and that may have had something to do with it.
Here in MN we have the Loon...more appropo than ever with Weird Al Franken in the Senate.
Mad town progressives, eh?
May have, but I do remember the Bascom Hill Pink Flamingo prank—
“The idea was sparked by a 1979 prank when pranksters on campus put out 1,008 of the birds.”
On the first day of classes, September 4, 1979, Madison students awoke to find that more than 1,000 pink flamingos covered the University’s Bascom Hill.
I was just a child, of course...
More here:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/museum/artifacts/archives/001660.asp
Ahead of their time... ;-)
;-)... Very true!
The Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin...
The maker of pink plastic flamingoes went out of business last year and they are an endangered species.
Madison is just so very precious....you just want to walk up to the city council and pinch them on the cheek.
Isn’t that kind of a small bore in the foreground?
NOT a ping
Pink Flamingos is about a family competing to be The Filthiest People Alive. Seems appropriate.
Of course, that would be a plastic gun in his/her hand. You know, to go with the plastic birds. It couldn’t be a _real_ gun...
Sheesh, you guys! Don't you know a da*ned BEEBER when you see one?? This one is not set to "stune," though. Looks like it's set on "ana-hilliate."
I look forward to the debate, aka the Rummel-Remmele Rumble. Just as long as no-one starts rambling.
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