The politics of July 4th fireworks

On this July 3rd evening, I enjoyed the holiday fireworks display in my western Minneapolis suburb of Edina. A clip of tonight’s finale:

Edina Fireworks, July 3

Apologies for the poor video quality. From my home, I could also view the fireworks display in nearby Bloomington. For those who live in the state’s largest cities, no such luck.

Minneapolis and St. Paul, for the third year in a row, have cancelled their holiday fireworks displays. Various reasons were given.

A number of other suburban cities will have fireworks displays on Monday night.

There were fireworks in the big cities this weekend. The Minnesota Twins feature fireworks after every Friday home game this summer. July 1 was no exception. The Twins’ AAA-affiliate St. Paul Saints hosted fireworks after every game this weekend. But nothing official from city government in either town.

It could be worse, the official City of Orlando (FL) press release for their July 4th fireworks display began as follows,

A lot of people probably don’t want to celebrate our nation right now, and we can’t blame them.

Official City of Orlando press release

The city retracted the press release and issued a semi apology. But at least the fireworks are going to happen in Orlando.

Not fireworks-related, but the Pima County Arizona Democrats put out an ad for their 4th of July event under the headline “F**K the Fourth.” The tweet was deleted, replaced with this statement:

On July 4th this year, National Public Radio ended a 33-year tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on the radio. They replaced the program with some wokery, instead.

Similarly, the New York Times “forgot” to print the text of the Declaration on July 4, a tradition going back a full century. After an outcry from readers, the paper printed it the next day.