Is there something rancid about the way we are mourning?
Today I saw:
A car with a football flag on one side and an American flag on the other, both on teeny tiny car flagpoles, both topped w/ fluorescent tennis balls. The itty bitty stars and stripes was halfway down its diminutive mast.
I also saw:
A woman wearing a popsicle-stick cross such as one might install over the grave of a parakeet. It had a RW&B ribbon around it.
Now I want to know: are we mourning the dead or are we cheerleading for the war? Ought we to conflate the two? If we’re grieving, why don’t we wear black armbands instead of RW&B bunting? If we’re supporting the war, is this the best way? Is it really wise for the entire nation to assume regalia like a colossal street gang?
I’ve wondered this myself. The current proliferation of the red white and blue doesn’t really project the austerity that I feel is called for regarding this horroble act. But, as I have said before, people will look for any excuse for a party. The current color displays are not so much to memorialize the dead and acknowledge the terrible times that we are facing, but rather to give a good “F- You!” to the terrorists (and anyone else perceived as unamerican) and gives people an excuse to climb back up on their high horse.
To give some credit, I think that people are feeling a little useless right now. The only ways that we really have to react to this is to give blood and fly the flag. Our national energy has yet to be channeled in to anything more constructive.
As for me, I am flying my peace flag. I love America, but I love humanity more.
Do you mean one of those brightly colored strips of cloth or plastic they use when they play Flag Football? A flag with a picture of a football on it? A flag with the Green Bay Packers logo on it?
To defend the woman, a child may have assembled the popsicle stick cross/ribbon thing for her. Moms often put on these wearable craft projects so that their kids feel okay about what they’ve made, then get busy and forget to take them off.
Other than that, the half-mast flags on car antennae do seem a little overmuch, but I’m thinking that for now, people are still at a place where they need to express their grief/support/feelings in just about any non-destructive way that they can.
A flag with the team logo on it. People drive around with pairs of these flanking their cars. Sometimes it’s flags, sometimes windsocks. Looks like somebody just took the left flag down and replaced it w/ half-mast old glory.
Another thing is businesses with those letterboards. There’s one in town that says:
Grilled mahi mahi
United we stand
one one side, and on the other:
Cajun patty melt
Bless the victims
The local Holiday Inn is flying the American flag at half mast and next to it the Holiday Inn flag, also at half mast. Holiday Inn grieves.
The New Yorker rightly removed all the cartoons from the magazine because nobody feels like giggling. But it left the ads. It’s disturbing to leaf through pictures of terrified people running through smoke and come across the usual glossy big lipstick grins and diamond studded Rolexes, the usual blow-in cards falling out in your lap.
Those of us who think a good way to express “grief” is to don team colors and shout cheers should consider the people whose family or friends are dead. I doubt the bereaved will be comforted to know their families are taking second billing to patty melts and football teams all over the heartland.
All these tacky (too strong a word? maybe) displays are, IMO, a symptom of the Hummelization of America that began in the 1970’s. When they began mass-producing low-cost cutesywutesy crap, people without taste compasses went wild. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my sister is one of them.
::stuyguy claws at his skin as if to scrape the very DNA from his cells::
You all are some cynical folks. I’m sorry, but if you folks don’t get it now, you just haven’t got it in you to ever get it.
Displays of red, white, and blue might be schmaltzy & contrived from YOUR willfully jaded eyes, but for the other 99.999% of us, we take comfort and pride in flying our nation’s colors and remembering the tragedy on signs outside of various places of business.
And yeah, it IS the least we can do.
It gives me pleasure to see that this post has gotten so few responses since yesterday afternoon.
It’s not an either-or situation. There are a full range of reactions. Yes, some mourn with silly popsicle stick crosses. Some mourn with silly million dollar monument statues in the park, solid brass, with engraved names of the dead. And which helps the most? Depends on who needs the help at the time.
I certainly hope 99.999% of businesses are not so crass as to imply that the commemoration of thousands of lost souls is secondary in importance to the announcement of a sandwich they would like to sell. In fact I think 99.9999999% of businesses who used their signs to commemorate the dead had the sense to know that memorials and advertising ought not to share space, so they removed advertising from their signs and put up messages of support.
What does this mean? Using specious proclamations of grief to sell a hamburger is not “the least we can do,” it’s worse than nothing.
A half-mast American flag at the post office feels right: it’s a serious recognition of the country’s grief. A half-mast American flag next to a half-mast Holiday Inn flag feels awful. Why didn’t they this one time take their ad flag down? If you’re going to fly the flag, have the decency to let it stand alone. Remove advertising, football regalia, etc. Can’t we stop selling for an instant and be serious? Not even now?
Finally, putting out flags is fine and invigorating, but it’s not doing anything. If you would like to do something, donate blood and money, say thank you to your local firefighters, comfort the terrified, protect the endangered, buy a plane ticket, that’s doing something.
Gee, en; & I bet you feel that the state and city flags shouldn’t’ve been flying alongside the national ensign either, hey? In case this has escaped you, the corporate flags are there to, supposedly, give a feeling of belonging to the employees of the corporation. It’s kind of like having a little IXTHI fish on the back of a car. Or maybe the folks with the fish should’ve removed the fish AND the carmaker’s logos from the vehicle before putting up a flag.
By now, I hope you realize that, yes, IMHO, it is entirely possible for a corporation (at least the people comprising it) to mourn.
I see. I had thought that flags sporting corporate logos were advertisments for corporations. You mean to say Holiday Inn installed that flag for its employees, not its customers? Desk clerks and waitstaff get teary-eyed when they see the familiar green and white banner? They watch for it oer the ramparts? Through the rockets red glare etc? Across the nation Holiday Inn staffers gather 'round the stalwart insignia of that corporation and stand arm in arm singing the proud commercial jingles and taking comfort in the midst of their grief that their flag is still there? I see, I see. I had not myself observed that behavior, nor have I ever seen anything remotely akin to it lo these many years of working for corporations.
Then there’s something sadly amiss w/ them. I defy you to find one unbinned employee who will say w/ reference to the events of 9/11, “proud to be a Hardees/Stanley Steemer/KPMG Peat Marwick employee at a time like this!”
D’ya mind my asking what you did mean? Maybe you meant: we need the Holiday Inn flag to fly at half mast alongside the national flag because H.I. employees who feel alienated from the nation will take some pride and comfort in this time of natl. tragedy in being reminded that they work for a top-quality hotel chain? I’m sorry I’m continuing to be an ass, it’s just that your argument’s so ludicrous.
