Comey indictment an attack on my right to arrange seashells! | Opinion

Like most Americans who express themselves primarily through carefully arranged seashells, I was shocked and frightened to learn the Trump administration has indicted former FBI Director James Comey over an Instagram post showing the numbers “86 47” written in our favorite medium.

Throughout my life, when spoken words have failed me, I’ve turned to seashells. I gather them from whichever beach is nearby, then use them to write words, generally on the part of the beach just out of reach of the incoming waves, allowing me to capture a bit of water in the photo I’ll inevitably post on social media.

“I’m Sorry,” I wrote once when I was feeling sorry, using scallop shells and shards of broken conchs.

“Spin Doctors Rule,” I wrote on a South Florida beach in the late 1980s when I thought the band the Spin Doctors ruled.

James Comey indictment has seashell enthusiasts worried

Until the April 28 Comey indictment, I never imagined my seashell words could be used against me in a court of law. 

Count one of the actually real indictment, a two-page document an assistant U.S. attorney who presumably has a real law degree willfully signed his name to, states that Comey “knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out '86 47', which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”

We in the broader communicate-via-seashell community have not historically believed any reasonable person would overanalyze our word-art. When I wrote “Bite me, Frank!” in bits of abalone shell last year and then posted the photo to Instagram, I did not think a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret it as me actually wanting Frank to bite me.

But here we are, apparently living in an age when our First Amendment right to arrange seashells however we want has been squashed by the federal government.

Only the Trump administration sees '86 47' as a threat

The indictment doesn’t explain this, but when Comey posted the seashell photo last May, some on the right claimed “86” is code for “kill” and “47” was a reference to the 47th president, Donald Trump. That last part is certainly true, but the first part is ludicrous, a word I once spelled out in seashells when I was mad at my friend Janet. I wrote, “Janet, you’re being ludicrous.” I was not arrested.

Merriam-Webster defines the number in question like this: “Eighty-six is slang meaning ‘to throw out,’ ‘to get rid of,’ or ‘to refuse service to.’ It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out.”

I pondered that definition a bit, then went down by the beach and gathered some helmet shells, volutes, augers and other discarded bivalve residences to express myself properly, spelling out: “ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME?”

Keep your politically motivated prosecutions away from my seashells

In defending the indictment, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who also happens to be Trump’s former personal attorney, said: “While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute.”

That drove me back to the seashore to write in seashells: “Are you sure about that?”

Following the uproar a year ago, Comey deleted the Instagram post of the offending seashells, saying he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.” That led me to write, in shells, of course: “86 is like a thing restaurant workers say. What are we going on about here?”

Every American has the right to spell out words in seashells

The new indictment brought the whole mess back, presumably because President Trump has a vendetta against Comey, or maybe just because the whole world has become extremely dumb.

Whatever the reason, what matters to people like myself and my allies in the sandcastle-enthusiast community is our right to freely express ourselves via assemblages of beach materials that will be photographed and later shared on social media. It’s FREEDOM OF BEACH, a line I’m going to write in seashells and photograph as soon as I finish this column.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.