I was thinking recently about the Bill Hicks routine where he mocks people worried about flag burning in which he says something along the lines of:
I’m just curious if he has a point. Where are American flags made? Is there any law that American flags have to be made in the US?
Does anyone see any significance in their flags not being made in their country? (I realize that introduces a IMHO into a GQ, so ignore it if it bothers you)
The smaller ones tend to be made overseas. The bigger ones are generally made in the US. I know all the flags at my school are domestically-produced.
The symbol isn’t the flag itself, it’s the pattern woven into the flag.
That doesn’t really change the question though. Would it bother people to know the pattern is woven in Bangladesh and not Bangor?
Slight hijack but I have recently wondered this. Does it matter to the ‘burning flags should be made a crime’ people whether or not the flag is a true stars-and-stripes? You often see on news reports from e.g. Iran the burning of vaguely stars-and-stripes like cloths, obviously intended to represent the real thing (unless I am missing some very subtle joke here, and these guys tend to be anything but subtle) but which rarely have the requisite number of either stars or stripes.
I once saw a US flag which was clearly labeled as being made in Taiwan. It had five staggered rows of ten stars each. :smack:
(Well at least they got the total number right.)
Whenever I see pictures of Iraqi’s burning an American flag, I notice more often then not that they couldn’t (afford to?) buy a flag. So they took a sheet, and assigned their kid sisters to help them color the sheet with felt-tipped pens or little pots of watercolor. It must have taken them all day.
And then they go out, find a guy with a camera and burn the flag.
And I can’t help it, but I every time I see the flag-burner looking all angry and dangerous all I keep seeing is those guys painstakingly busy with their kid sisters and their felt-tipped pens, and I can only go “awww”.
In most such pictures, there are four of five men at most looking angry and shouting. But if you look to their right and left, you see they are surrounded by men and boys who mainly seem to think : " Cool! Some guys are doing some interesting stuff: let’s go look, before mom calls us in again for dinner!"
All your star are belong to us?
There was a Made in America episode on the Travel Channel about Annin Flags. Here is more info.
I was at a State Convention where a candidate seeking endorsement for a state office distributed small american flags to all the tables where the voting delegates were sitting. The flags had small stickers on them saying “Made in China”. One of the labor union delegates promptly went to a microphone and pointed this out to the Convention.
That candidate did not get endorsed.
It’s not hard to buy US flags that are made in the US. I have a 50-star model, and I have a “Betsy Ross model,” which I fly on Independence Day. Both are legally US flags.
Where are American flags made?
Most likely China, where almost every manufactured item comes from.
Clever people those Chinese. 75 to 80 years ago it was Japan.
That would be a good answer if this were the Most Likely forum, but this is General Questions.
Here is a citation from a government website with actual figures, which I found on the The US Census Bureau.
Since the figures on that page are by dollar value, and not by units sold, it’s hard to say whether any given “flag, banner, or similar emblem” is made overseas.
