The red-and-white blues
(and yellow fringe)
by David Benjamin
“Speech
doesn't just mean written words or oral words. It could be semaphore.
And burning a flag is a symbol that expresses an idea…”
— Justice Antonin Scalia
MADISON,
Wis. — The Stars and Stripes is easily the most battered and
beleaguered flag in anybody’s history. Most recently, Old Glory was
dissed by a backup quarterback who prefers to stay seated during “The
Star-Spangled Banner” — a custom that is, after a fashion, another form
of flag abuse. I mean, every game?
As most of us
remember, all this flag fuss started in grade school. At St. Mary’s
every morning, I had to pledge my allegiance to some guy named Richard
Stanz. Later, in my Cub Scout flag-etiquette tutorial, I learned that
you put hand on heart for the pledge, but you only have to take off your
hat for the anthem. And saluting? That’s only allowed for people in
uniform (firemen, Marines, Brownies, the Klan, etc.).
So, it
rankles when I scan the ballpark and see all these patriots with their
hands on their hearts… and their adjust-o-band logo caps glued to their
gourds.
During the bloodbath in Vietnam, I mounted a small
half-burned American flag on my college dorm room wall. My point was
that when a free nation goes astray — as America has too often done —
it desecrates its most cherished emblems, specifically the Stars and
Stripes.
I know. Didactic and metaphorical. But this was college, OK?
Nobody
but my roomie ever saw my toasted flag ’til Christmas break, when the
campus police searched my room — thereby violating the my Fourth
Amendment rights. Soon after, the college president himself wrote to Mom
exposing me as an Enemy of the State. I wrote back, telling John to
mind his own beeswax and stay the hell out of my room.
Looking
back, I decided that President Howard had a practical — albeit
unconstitutional — point. Trying to use the Stars and Stripes for
sophisticated symbolism is one of the hobgoblins of little minds. This
was doubly true in the Sixties, when an innocent red-white-and-blue
painter’s cap, or a pair of Old Glory pants pockets could get you beat
up by stevedores and rousted by cops with flag patches on their sleeves
(another flag-etiquette no-no, but who’s gonna argue?).
Later in
life, in Japan, I found a fresh perspective on flag idolatry. Ashamed of
its decades of misuse by the fascists who crushed all dissent, attacked
Pearl Harbor, enslaved East Asia and launched a disastrous war, the
Japanese people today tend to shun their own flag. Flag display is seen
as a sign of militarist delusion, reactionary zeal and misplaced
ostentation. Japan’s World War II battle flag, with the cool red rays
sticking out of the Rising Sun, is virtually forbidden.
In
Tokyo, you could burn a flag, but nobody would come. Here in the Land of
the Hypersensitive, flag arson is still guerrilla theater for the
unimaginative, catnip for news crews, grist for demagogues, and a
millstone around the neck of the Supreme Court. Worst, it steals
attention from more insidious forms of flag abuse.
For instance,
why can’t the Cowboys, Seahawks and Patriots settle, modestly, for a
standard-issue Old Glory flapping above the grandstand? Where is it
written in NFL bylaws that every game has to feature a hundred-yard flag
spread over the whole field, while F-35s fly over and giant speakers
roar John Philip Sousa so loud that it damages eardrums and traumatizes
toddlers?
Nowadays at almost every game, fans are compelled to
honor “sacrifices” with which 98 percent of Americans no longer
associate. In Old Glory’s name, we’ve mustered a vast (ironically
underpaid) mercenary army to do the dirty, bloody work of empire while
the rest of us watch games. We delegate our official bloodshed to a
handful of PTSD-ravaged “volunteers,” then soothe our conscience by
clapping hand over heart and shrouding a carpet of fake grass — named
after a multinational corporation — with a crudely colossal version of
the flag beneath which we’ve laid to rest the 3,000 Union dead at
Gettysburg, the 9,387 buried above Omaha Beach and the 60,000 kids whose
names are etched in Maya Lin’s heartbreaking wall. Not to mention all
those loyal shnooks whose number finally came up on their eighth or
ninth tour in Afghanistan.
After the mega-flag and before the
anthem, we roll out a few vets in wheelchairs — a perfect moment to hit
the concourse for another $10 light beer.
This is the milieu of
mock patriotism wherein Colin Kaepernick inexplicably discovered his
civil rights and recoiled at the flag. Before he “spoke up,” I didn’t
like him much. This was based on how he played football (arrogantly and
imprecisely). His lame effort to protest his people’s “oppression,” by
snubbing the national anthem before a desultory exhibition game, didn’t
capture many imaginations or advance any cause I could discern.
After
all, the kid’s real “people” are overpaid jocks. I reach for my union
card whenever I hear a millionaire empathizing with the peanut gallery,
whether he’s a jock who’s been pampered ever since he was discovered
playing PeeWee ball, or a silver-spoon tycoon professing brotherhood
with farmers and miners whose hands are too dirty for him to shake.
Kaepernick’s
problem isn’t his beliefs or his difficulty articulating them. It’s not
even his inability to read an NFL defense. It’s getting mixed up with
the flag. Whether you burn it or wear it, the flag is going to overwhelm
you with everybody else’s symbolism, and no one will listen to what you
think you’re saying.
Don’t wave it. Don’t torch it. Don’t
stitch it to your ass and don’t wear a flag-motif windbreaker (or
Bermudas, or halter top, or Cat-in-the-Hat hat). Salute it when they run
it up the pole, but don’t try to express yourself with it. Leave Old
Glory to the pandering pols, the conventioneers, the nativists and
yahoos, the Eagle Scouts, the Fourth of July concerts and all those
used-car lots on Route One.
George M. Cohan once said, “Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.” But that was before we had the NFL.
Friday, September 2, 2016
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2 comments:
Was this a brilliant idea on Kaepernick's part? No. Do I like Kaepernick or respect him as a player? No. On the other hand, he is exercising a right, whether he has the faintest clue what he's doing or not. People getting their undies in a twist over this are giving him more attention than he deserves.
All I can think of to say... Is that sometimes what you say (many times actually) is better than mere words. I have no idea what the controversy is about, but I love it! Thank you.
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