Circumcision protesters at the Capitol Saturday

I don’t know why, but these stories keep popping up, so to speak. Now that the Tea Party protesters have gone home, along with the thousands protesting for immigration reform — who were practically ignored by the media, due to bad timing — this week’s protesters were few in number but equally provocative.

Standing on the Capitol’s South Lawn on a sunny day, when the Mall was full of families flying kites and tourists ogling cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin, these “intactivists” held several attention-grabbing signs.

So I went to their web site, StopInfantCircumcision.org, which has a charming, early ’90s web design, reinforcing the impression that this is a fringe group without enough funds to build itself a decent web 2.0 site, accompanied by Facebook fan page and Twitter feed. But if you click on the “I’d rather not know” button on their homepage, you’ll see a photo of a baby undergoing the procedure. He certainly appears to be in pain. And let it be said that the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend routine circumcision for babies, but yet more than half of U.S. parents of baby boys choose the procedure.

The Stop Infant Circumcision site also has an interesting article about Nobel Laureate George Wald’s adoption of the movement and his attempt to interest the legendary New Yorker editor Wallace Shawn in an essay on the topic. Shawn declined, and 25 years later, New Yorker senior editor Hendrik Hertzberg told circumcision opponent Van Lewis, “I am not at all surprised that Shawn turned it down. The reason, I’m sure, is that he was incredibly queasy about anything involving bodily functions and/or private parts. He wouldn’t have even allowed the word ‘foreskin’ into the magazine, let alone publish an entire article about the cutting off of same.”

So while the gentlemen at the Capitol seemed a bit wacky (the Uncle Sam hat and the tie-dye, for example, not leading to an impression of seriousness) they do have their points. But, really, wouldn’t the Washington Monument have been a better site for the protest? Or, better yet, the Ypsilanti Water Tower?