Remember that little flap some months ago when Barack Obama made news for not wearing an American flag on the lapel of his suit coats and not putting his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance? People noticed the omissions because they were new-- he'd done the conventional thing before, and wasn't doing it any more. If memory serves, Obama said at the time that he'd decided to put aside "cheap symbols of patriotism," because patriotism wasn't about gesture or wardrobe choices, it was about speaking out on important issues.
He may not have used those exact words, but that was the gist of his thought. William Kristol was among the right-wing pundits who took him to task for putting on airs of moral superiority. Left-wing pundits saw the matter differently, and applauded Obama for "speaking truth to power."
It occurs to me (very belatedly, I must admit) that almost anything we do to self-identify as Americans can be dismissed as a cheap symbol of patriotism if you're iconoclast enough to sneer at flags and tee shirts and the Pledge.
Here's what I wonder: has Obama ever done the Chicken Dance at a wedding reception, or lent his voice to a chorus of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during a seventh-inning stretch? Do Barack and Michelle Obama look at their wedding rings with price tags in mind? I mean those questions seriously.
In other words, isn't it up to us to invest cheap symbolism with whatever dignity it has? And isn't wearing a miniature flag as good a way to do that as writing a letter to the editor or elbowing your way to the microphone during the "public comment" portion of a town meeting?
When we fall down on the job, as of course we all do from time to time, might not shared symbols of our national political heritage retain some value as a consequence of what Americans before us have done?
I'm thinking that when the Marines raised that flag on Mount Suribachi in World War Two, it wasn't just to boost the morale of their bretheren fighting to hold onto Iwo Jima. It was also because the precursors to that flag had meant a lot to Nathan Hale, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, and Andrew Jackson, and everybody in the Continental Army who had struggled through a hard winter at Valley Forge with George Washington.
We know that Obama wore ceremonial tribal garb on at least one visit to Africa, and more recently gave his "more perfect union" speech in front of several American flags. No sane person would begrudge him the symbolism of those gestures. Why then does he now sneer at the symbolism of lapel pin flags and the "Pledge of Allegiance" posture?
I don't get it.
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1 comments:
Beautifully said, and food for thought.
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