Seattle Bans "Buy American" Ads For Being "Too Political"

What a bunch of ninnies:

Seattle’s public transit system is under fire for rejecting an advertising campaign urging people to buy American and shop locally because it was too political.

“It was a shock to us,” said Richard Tso, executive director of TAP America, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization.

The rejected ads read: “December is Buy American Month, Shop Locally, Join Seattle’s TAPamerica.org.”

Tso said his organization was prepared to pay as much as $9,000 for the ads to be posted on 45 Metro buses running through major shopping districts in downtown Seattle and Bellevue, WA.
“The ads were rejected by King County as being too political,” Tso told Fox News & Commentary, wondering if the county was simply being politically correct.

“Buy American should never be a bad word,” he said. “Those are words we should have pride in as citizens of the United States.”

But county officials told the Seattle Times that they have a policy against ads that express a viewpoint on “matters of public debate about political, religious or social issues.”

“The concept of ‘Buy American’ is an issue of both political and economic debate,” spokeswoman Linda Thielkein wrote in an email to the newspaper.

I realize that this was designed as a local campaign, but keep in mind that one of the biggest employers in Seattle is Boeing, and their principle competitor is Airbus, a European consortium backed by several governments. If there's one thing you'd think the people in Seattle would want is for people to "buy American".