Crazy for the Red, White & Blue

This election year’s obligatory flag burning amendment crashed and burned yet again today, like all its predecessors.

I have some questions about what this flag burning really means.

I was just at Pride last week, and wondered, “If a diva queen sashayed around in a flag Speedo, would that be flag burning, or just flag flaming?” Is one a misdemeanor and the other not?

What if said person had gonorrhea, is it burning now?

Would Blue Oyster Cult have to add a caveat to their song “I’m Burning for You” like “No flags were burned in the making of this song; but the lead singer did scratch his crotch a lot.”

If you live in fire country, and forget to take your flag down before your house burns to the ground, would you have been cited under the amendment for unlawful flag burning? If the fire was an act of (allegedly) God, where do we send the ticket?

Most flags are now made of petroleum products anyway. Do they burn, or just unaesthetically melt over and into whatever surface you had them on? If you melted a flag over your bumper, would it be more or less “patriotic” than a Chinese-made magnetic flag-ribbon?

How does one truly express love for one’s country nowadays? Anonymously send Ann Coulter a jar of Adam’s apple polish?

Speaking of apple-polishers, I suppose we could all get together and send Bill O’Reilly a truck full of falafel with a Nobel Peace Prize buried in it. Once found, it can go on the shelf next to his imaginary Peabody awards.

Why is it that those who seem to profess their love of country the loudest and most shrilly, are also the people trying to write denials of rights into the Constitution? This is the second one, the first being the federal defense of marriage act, which also went down, sans flames (we save flaming for things we like).

Why does the right wing seem to hate our freedom so? Why do their minions do such asinine things as protest at military funerals? Good grief, these men and women died so you could be an asshole in public, so please exercise said right away from their grieving families, Mr. Phelps, you consummate jackass.

Yet, the people elected into office by nutjobs like this are innocently wondering what happened to their poll numbers. Well, Enron, troop armor, half a trillion bucks down the Iraqi drain with no end in sight, loss of focus on Afghanistan, deficit, trimming VA bennies, estate tax, and so on and so on and scoobie doobie doobie.
What we consumers get is a steady diet of Brangelina, TomKat, “cut and run” (this year’s “perfect storm” of Swift-Boatese), and now, “save the flag”.

You know, how about we save the farking country and let the goddamn flag fend for itself until it means something again?