Some Americans Hate the American Flag

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 I put my flag up on my way out the door to work; as usual, it was the only flag that I saw in my neighborhood. On my walk to the el I used to walk by a food pantry that seemed to cater to gay adults and they always had some sort of ultra-liberal window display. That morning it was a window display that blamed George Bush for the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t stop to try and figure out their logic but it did give me a chuckle. At the time that AIDS first turned up in America George Bush was still hitting the sauce, did he get a little too looped one night and start a scourge? But I digress. At the time I lived in a sometimes radical neighborhood and repeatedly had my flag vandalized, stolen and burned. When I returned that afternoon the Bush nonsense was gone and many people were flying their flags.

Joel Stein of the LA Times may have been one of my neighbors, yesterday he wrote
“Eek: A Flag on my Lawn”. Writing as if he had seen a mouse (the horrors!) the poor guy gets much excised over the display of the flag and tries to opine that the people who fly flags are all some sorts of rubes. Having been to LA (and liking it) I was surprised that someone would feign sophistication. Especially such sophistication over a flag.

Instead of reading Stein’s drivel, or in addition, check out
Betsy’s Page for a great anti-Stein rant!