The Hidden Moral Here

The moral of this week’s New York Press feature about the man that attempted an Election Day takeover of Governor’s Island, Jolly Roger in tow, is not that he highlighted possible security flaws, not that he should be reprimanded for diverting precious counterterrorism resources during a heightened threat level and not even the Press’ pronouncement that David Nash “may be the last honest revolutionary patriot the country has left.” The real moral here is that had Saturday Night Live not dismissed out of hand a perfectly reasonable idea for an Al Sharpton comedy sketch, all this hubbub could have been averted:

The original notion . . . began with a comedy sketch [Nash had] written and mailed to Al Sharpton in 2003, hoping Sharpton would perform it while hosting Saturday Night Live. In the sketch, Sharpton leads a flotilla of sailboats and yachts across the harbor to Governors Island, where he plants a pirate flag in the sand and claims the island for slave-reparation purposes.

“The idea evolved from that. When nobody else did it, I decided that I had to do it.” At the time, Nash was making his second presidential bid under the Blue Tulip banner and looking to get his ideas a little exposure.

“It took a little while to plan the swim over,” he said. “It’s pretty dangerous out there in the harbor. I was worried about the currents sweeping me away from the island, and having to tie off to a buoy or something…I had to study the tide charts and the currents to see how risky it would be. It finally took a lot of just deciding to do it.”

In the wee hours of Nov. 2, David Nash, in a full wetsuit and black camouflage facepaint, entered the chill waters off Brooklyn, and made the roughly 800-yard swim.

Shortly before seven o’clock that morning, workmen couldn’t help but notice the trespasser on the beach—the one who was hoisting an enormous blue skull-and-crossbones flag. The skull had a neat bullet hole between its two red eyes, and the legend “Blue Tulip Party” had been embroidered beneath it. The workmen, figuring this sort of thing was a bit out of their jurisdiction, called the NYPD.

And the real tragedy — the worst thing about this story — is that the SNL episode with Al Sharpton sucked!