That was the tenor, though not the exact wording of an e-mail I received from a friend last week. (I don't have the e-mail anymore to refer to it.)
I was directed to a Fox News website with a simple poll that asked whether the American flag should be banned. Yes, no.
The e-mail warned me that an untoward number of people had voted "yes," and encouraged me to vote, apparently so we could shoot down the unpatriotic twerps who had the audacity to want to ban the American flag.
Usually, when a news site runs a poll like this, they give some explanation or a link to the story that prompted the question. No such luck here, though I did notice the poll was about a year old. Ah, the Internet. Nothing ever dies on the Internet.
Use the keywords "banned" and "flag" on the site, and the only page you'll get is for the poll because the story that lies behind it has nothing to do with banning the flag.
Seems that last year a small group of high school students turned up at a school whose name I've forgotten and don't care to look up again wearing flag bandanas and shirts emblazoned with the flag. On Cinco de Mayo.
The school determined that the boys intended to tick off Hispanic students and made them remove the bandannas and turn the shirts inside out. The student opted to leave for the day.
Reminds me of the time a small group of students at my high school wearing Confederate uniforms. You might not think too much of that because I attended Robert E. Lee High School, but they did this early in the first six weeks of the year we integrated.
Both groups of boys were hoping a commotion. And although you might want to argue their free speech rights, schools are really not obliged to encourage students to pick fights with other students.
Regardless, my first thought was, "So much for Fox News being an unbiased source of information." Honestly, if anyone believes that Fox doesn't have an agenda, it's solely because they have the same agenda. Someone sharing your bias doesn't mean it's not a bias.
More troubling to me is the continual fuss on the part of people who worry that we're not being patriotic enough. These are the folks who react angrily to the flag being "banned," when no plot to ban the flag exists, and who believe we should have an amendment making it a criminal offense to desecrate the flag, specifically to burn a flag as a political protest.
My guess is that most of these so-called patriots have no idea that Congress adopted the Uniform Flag Code back in the '40s, which makes it part of federal law.
Too many people believe that the Uniform Flag Code is like the pirate code in "Pirates of the Caribbean," more sorta guidelines than actual rules. In practicality that's true because the law contains no enforcement measures and Supreme Court rulings based on the First Amendment would nullify some of its provisions.
But the law was developed to explain how to show proper reverence for the national ensign, surely the concern of every patriot.
Only patriots may be the worst violators of the law.
For instance, the code says the flag "should never be used for advertising purpose in any manner whatsoever." Hmm.
It states, "the flag should never be used as wearing apparel ..." which depending on how you interpret that, means that wearing bandannas that look like flags or T shirts with flags on them may well violate the code, be a sign of disrespect. Hmm and hmm.
That reminds me of the man I knew in Lockney, Texas, who was livid after seeing a teen with long hair wearing jeans with a flag on them. He didn't think the boy was patriotic; he thought the boy needed a thrashing for disrespecting the flag.
And my favorite part of the code says that the flag should never be printed or impressed on anything designed for temporary use and discard. You know, like napkins, paper plates, packaging. Hmm, hmm and hmm.
Could it be that the patriot who serves barbecue and sides during a patriotic holiday on a paper plate festooned with a flag and then wipes her mouth with a napkin that looks like a flag before tossing the whole kit and kaboodle in the trash is as disrespectful at the flag burner she despises?
Hmm.
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