I want to know if Katie Couric and Ann Coulter wear flag lapel pins all the time. 'Cause if they don't, you know, why should I care.

Jonah Goldberg just wanted to pin the label of 'stupid' to himself permanently by making the comments he made on this thing.

"Effluvium" about captures all that needs to be said.

George Will, of all people, nailed this one today. He said Obama was right. Will said that wearing the flag "as a fashion accessory" can mean only one of two things: (1) that the wearer wants you to know he is patriotic, "something that should be presumed in this country" and thus is unnecessary; or (2) that the wearer believes that those who don't wear the pin are not patriotic, "which is just offensive."

"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" - Dr Johnson.

Maybe Kev, but you have to admit that to a lot of Americans - especially the conservative kind - symbols of things are way more meaningful than the things themselves.

and bad to the extent that it appeals to mere jingoism. The fact that it's been mostly the latter in recent years is the problem, not the symbolism itself.

And that, I believe, was Mr. Obama's point in the first place.

a lot of Americans - especially the conservative kind - symbols of things are way more meaningful than the things themselves.

Not quite, Craigie. To those Americans, the symbol is the thing itself. These people possess no capability at all for abstraction. A writer I heard give a lecture once explained it perfectly: "When they see the word "sh*t" on the page, they recoil as if you'd just handed them a hot, stinking turd."

...but you have to admit that to a lot of Americans - especially the conservative kind - symbols of things are way more meaningful than the things themselves.

Not only that, craigie, but they tend to mistake the symbol for the thing itself. Like the dog or cat who examines the tip of your pointing finger instead of the thing you point at, I think many people think that wearing a flag lapel pin, or having a magnetic yellow ribbon on their ride is actually all that is involved in this state of being called patriotism.

Or maybe that's what you're saying.

I don't much go for symbols, at least I imagine that I don't. If we spent a little more time thinking about how to solve problems, instead of demonstrating our action-free solidarity, maybe we'd get something done. And often, it seems that the symbol is all that we get; rather than think about this damnable Iraq war, just slap a magnetic yellow ribbon on a car. And if the car happens to be a single-passenger gas-guzzler, no cognitive dissonance whatsoever, because heck, we support the troops, that's enough, right?

I believe it was Media matters for America that had this wonderful expose of republicans,
water carriers for republicans, and repub presidential candidates not wearing flag pins,
Sean Hannity and his ilk not wearing them, with documented videographic evidence
day after day.

"Rather, it's just the latest example of the effluvium that wafts over our public discourse when you combine conservative cynicism with press corps ennui."

That's really a great sentence.

Okay, I give up. What does a cardigan sweater symbolize? It's a thing, not a representation of a thing, and, as such, serves a purpose beyond evoking ideas about something else. If your point is that it makes some kind of a statement, then it's pretty bland, as statements go, and has far more to do with perception ("that guy in the cardigan must be a nerd") than some kind of suggested meaning ("I'm wearing this cardigan to tell you that I'm a nerd").

... not that I have anything against nerds. Or people who wear cardigans. In fact, some of my best friends...

junebug -

Kevin's referring to Jimmy Carter's infamous cardigan he wore during the late 70's energy crisis. It was intended to symbolize turning down the heat in your home (to save energy) and putting on a sweater to stay warm. It was widely ridiculed at the time.

At least, that's what I assume Kevin is referring to.

.

If you are a Republican, it is not the medals on your chest, it is the flag pin on your lapel that proves you are a patriot.

I dunno where pop culture gets the idea that real patriotism can only be expressed symbolically, or that it has no cost.

Here's a couple real examples, more or less at random:

1) EVERY naturalized citizen is as good an American as ANYBODY born here. And so is anybody born here, no matter who their parents were.

If you don't believe either of those things, if you don't believe 'em both and act 'em out, you're not a patriot, cuz whatever it is that you love, it's not America.

2) Any US citizen can think or say any damn fool thing they want about our damn fool President, or the idjits who run the US military. (I won't even mention Congress.)

3) Running for office is a noble thing. Honest.

4) The Confederacy was wrong.

5) In this country, "We, the People" rule. Folks who deny that to insist it is "the Man", or "the media", or "the military industrial complex", are both full of shit and too damned self-righteously lazy to do the hard work of changing what they don't like, cuz it involves persuading people who know they're full of shit.

6) It is a noble thing to vote.

7) It is a noble thing to serve in the American military.

8) American citizenship is DIFFERENT, because America is exceptional. Sure, you have Constitutionally multicultural Canada, and the charming Australians, etc., but in the end, the only nation that has been as big and good as the USA is the USA.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Why bother gabbing about symbols?

Thanks for clueing me in, spork_incident. Makes sense now. And just to be clear, I've got nothing against Jimmy Carter, either.

Symbolism is fine, and doesn't need an intellectual defense. Patriotism, on the other hand, is scary. Any defense of patriotism implicitly accepts violence.

Great post, Kevin.

To illustrate the point you made, imagine that in 2009 President Barack Obama has the responsibility of encouraging young men and women to volunteer for the military. Imagine that he has the responsibility of encouraging military personnel to fight as well as they can, even at the risk of serious injury or death.

Would he find the American Flag a useful symbol in achieving these goals? Of course he would.

"Any defense of patriotism implicitly accepts violence."

I dunno that I buy the implication, but take it directly: why would this be a BAD thing?

ex-liberal: "... imagine that in 2009 President Barack Obama has the responsibility of encouraging young men and women to volunteer for the military. Imagine that he has the responsibility of encouraging military personnel to fight as well as they can, even at the risk of serious injury or death..."

Now imagine that ex-liberal enlisted in the military to fight as well as he can, even at the risk of serious injury or death, in order to win the war in Iraq he so assiduously supports.

ex-liberal: imagine that in 2009 President Barack Obama has the responsibility of encouraging young men and women to volunteer for the military. Imagine that he has the responsibility of encouraging military personnel to fight as well as they can, even at the risk of serious injury or death. Would he find the American Flag a useful symbol in achieving these goals?

Of course. Even more useful though would be the fact that the commander-in-chief was no longer an irresponsible idiot who would send them half a world away to fight and die for no good reason.

theAmericanist: The Confederacy was wrong.

Only if you accept the judgmental premise that treason against your representative and duly constituted government, and committing such treason only in order to ensure that you can continue to enslave other human beings, is "wrong".

Speaking of symbols -- I remember a WW2 vet's story, about a guy from middle America who went to DC with his girl to see the sights before going overseas. He tells the story of being a tourist in uniform, looking at the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, all in daylight because they were blacked out at night.

Walking her back to her dorm (which had chaperones), they went by the White House. A guard stopped them, the gates opened, and a car drove out -- pausing for a moment at the intersection, and there in the back, reading something, was FDR.

The guy said that all day, despite his basic training and being in uniform, being with his girl and gawking at the sites, eating ice cream and so on, he had basically gone back to his civilian teenaged persona. So when he saw FDR looking just like the newsreels, only for real, he just stared.

The President looked up, his face very serious. He saw the couple looking at him -- and then he straightened up, and with steely eyes, he SALUTED the kid in his uniform.

The way the vet told the story, he recovered himself, remembered he was in the Army and this was the Commander-in-Chief, and he SNAPPED to attention to return the salute that he should have given first... and as he did all that, FDR gave that 1,000 watt smile to his girl, and the car drove off.

"To be honest, I don't think the lapel pin pseudo-controversy even rises to the level of symbolism. Rather, it's just the latest example of the effluvium that wafts over our public discourse when you combine conservative cynicism with press corps ennui. To call it symbolism is to give genuine symbolism short shrift."

This is lame. There is good symbolism and bad symbolism, weak symbolism and strong symbolism. To call bad or weak symbolism what it is--symbolism, bad or weak--is simply honest. To say it isn't symbolism is to distort the language and the debate.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible."
--Sinclair Lewis

And let's not start with how the flag is used in clothes -- tshirts, bandanas, swimsuits, bikinis.

And try telling someone who has his flag out 24/7 (unlit at night) about how this violates respect for it.

RaymondA on October 7, 2007 at 3:01 PM: Apocalypse Alert: George Will said something sensible.

But don't you want to take people who say "I fought for that flag" and slap them upside the head? To the extent that my military service was commendable (and that's a whole other argument I'll set aside for the moment) I was "fighting" not for the flag, but for the country.

This administration understands the importance of symbolism; why else would they have such an iron grip on the media and the images that come out of Iraq, or anywhere else on the planet for that that matter?

Flags are an ancient form of communication. A rally 'round them resembles an excited group of chimpanzees or baboons, except it is only humankind who reacts emotionally and violently to a symbol of nation, religious affiliation, tribe, clan or gang. Flags elicit responses of belonging and declaring membership, which must have been developed many ages ago. Even as we acquire new forms of communication, the old still command an almost unconscious respect that belies our societal instincts.

I have burned a flag once in my life, not so much for the symbolism of the flag, but the meta-symbolism that conservatives attach to how we should use, or misuse, the flag as symbol.

(Plus, there was the irony value of it being one of those cheap-ass Made in China handheld flags.)

If you want to do a REALLY effective protest with the flag, wash it in public. Don't insult folks or invite pointless first amendment clashes.

Get a REALLY big one. Get some sort of easily washable, sticky mud-like substance that you can paint big X's with. And get a big tub of water. (NB -- you want to test this, before you go public. Be sure it DOES come clean, but it's not that hard if you do it right.)

You put the flag on display, then you say whatever it is you object to -- 'look at what Bush has done to the Constitution, with this, or look at what Bush has done to our military, with that...'

For each instance, you mark a big X on the flag. Finish with whatever you think the worst offense is, with a BIG mark across all the stripes -- then, you take the flag down (because a flag so desecrated...), and dunk it in the washtub, while you do the rest of the message: but if we do this... and we do that... we have to WORK on it, and then...

You wring out the flag (have clean water to rinse it in), and hang it back up: OUR flag is resilient, OUR flag isn't scarred by their (sins, crimes, errors), WE can wash OUR flag clean, and look! what it stands for is as bright as ever...

Hell, if you're gonna use symbols, use 'em right.

I agree theAmericanist, that could be an very dramatic protest if done right and would be hard for opponents to twist into something it wasn't.

But when it comes to cheap displays of patriotism and essentially meaningless controversies like whether Obama is/should be wearing a flag lapel pin, I think John Prine said it best in song.

"... but your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore..."

I was at a ceremony where a giant flag was burned. It was the official flag of a navy warship, and it was retired by incineration at a Boy Scout Jamboree. I remember obeying the instructions to close my eyes and how bright the glare was through my lids when it was placed on the bonfire. I was young then, and still susceptible to the lies and platitudes of America's greatness, generosity and compassion.

I keep a little flag on the floor of my car today, waiting to burn it at the next anti-war rally. It was left on my door recently by a Republican candidate for city council. Some would prefer I wave it frantically during a victory in Iraq parade, but am going to burn it publicly as a rebuke to such a butch interpretation of American power.

LOL -- "butch"?

Projecting a bit there, Brojo?

The real proof that it's just a symbol is the fact that none of these so-called 'patriots' were wearing the flag on 9/10/01.

I was wathcing the CBS half-time show yesterday during the Giants-Jets game; every one of the commentators had a flag pin on their lapels! Does anybody know if that's something that CBS expects them to do?

Coming of age in the '60s I always thought those evil Commie leaders looked especially suspect becuase they invariably had a Soviet flag pin in their lapel. Now I realize I was right: they were likely scoundrels like the ones we have here.

Since all of my predictions 'round here have been borne out, here's another one: SOON, some enterprising progressive is gonna decide the best available and as-yet un-re-branded American symbol is the "don't tread on me" rattlesnake.

And THAT's the pin we're gonna wear.

Just what we need, a "liberal swastika" that appeals to emotion and causes people to forsake reason and principle for symbolic loyalty.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

About a month after 9/11, I was in the checkout line at a grocery store. The clerk asked if I wanted an American flag sticker for my jacket. I said no thanks. She asked me why. I responded: "we're not going down this road again, are we?"

The American flag bumper sticker/lapel pin has always smacked of that jingoistic, love-it-or-leave-it thinking that was all around us in the Vietnam era. I prefer to think that patriotism can be better expressed by paying one's fair share of taxes, building better roads & bridges and paying teachers more money and our investment bankers less money than we invest in our schools.

So, David: you LIKE being delusional?

Cuz you "prefer to think" the symbols don't matter? Um -- what if they DO? Your thought preferences aren't just naive, they're arrogant. Face it: you're WRONG, precisely because you're so sure you're right. (Cue Learned Hand.)

There was a great bit of performance art a few years back (I apologize to the artist, cuz I don't think I ever learned his name), where at someplace like the Cleveland Museum this guy laid out a HUGE American flag on the floor by a wall, with a case in a little stand against the wall and a big arrow "LOOK HERE". But you couldn't look in without stepping on the flag.

I saw a couple articles about it, because it created this fascinating little crowd dynamic, a kind of Candid Camera thing, as people confronted whether they were curious enough to actually walk on the flag to look in the case...

.. which had the Bill of Rights in it. To read the SUBSTANCE, you had to stand on the SYMBOL.

Rejecting symbols, because they're symbols, is just stupid. Would I abandon my wife to save my wedding ring? Of course not. But would I dis the ring, just cuz it's a symbol -- whaddaya, nuts?

It MEANS something -- something good.

LOL --and for somebody to huff that progressives wearing "don't tread on me" to sorta brand that distinctly American attitude as OURS, notably for domestic politics, as a "liberal swastika" is pretty much a sign the guy considers a conservative Republican footprint on his face to be proof of moral superiority, rather than rank stoooopidity.