Lapel Flag Watch

With all the real issues at issue these days, we clearly need more non-issue issues to leaven the load, issue wise.

Lapel flags are not the burning issue they once were. Immediately after 9/11, they constituted an important public signifier, indicating: “I am Ready to Lose My Mind for My Country.”

Many patriotic Americans not ready to drink the Bush/Cheney Kool-Aid were unwillingly trapped by default into making a non-lapel-flag-wearing statement that was easily misconstrued by lapel-flag-wearing-patriots as actually siding with the enemy. If you left your lapel unadorned while all around you real Americans were giving their lapels over to support The War on Terror, were you not in fact handing your lapel over to Osama. And if you gave your lapel to Osama what else might you be willing to surrender to him: your first born, the keys to your SUV, a balloon mortgage on your God given right to your personal portion the American dream.

As The Iraq War slid into a boondoggle the lapel flags quietly became scarcer. The statement made by any given a lapel flag became more ambiguous. Lapel flags were worn even by scathing critics of Bush and the war. They wore flags as if to say: “Don’t tell me I can’t love my country and hate this idiot at the same time.” A lapel flag became an unreliable indicator of the wearer’s position on the war and feeling toward the administration.

People who had worn lapel flags aggressively in the early days, and continued to support the war, started to be less consistent in there wearing of the lapel flag, as if to acknowledge sheepishly: “OK I love my country, and I happen to support the war, but I’m not a lockstep moron.”

After the election of 2004, lapel flag wearing or non-wearing became completely chaotic, almost meaningless. Dennis Kucinich could wear one and Dick Cheney might actually be caught out without one. Unless you knew the wearer well, you might never be able to figure out what they meant by it, if they meant anything at all. Lapel flags became a take it or leave it sort of accessory.

Then Obama made that perfectly reasonable statement a few months before the election about not needing to wear a lapel flag to show his patriotism.

Some squawkers squawked and it became clear that there actually were voters so dumb that they actually would withhold their votes from Obama unless he put on a lapel flag. So Obama started wearing a lapel flag. Obama wore the flag without irony. Obama favored a very small, flat, minimalist lapel flag. It seemed to whisper: “I am wearing this subtle and not at all in your face lapel flag pin because even though I don’t need to wear this pin to show my love of country, I would not want anyone to misunderstand my lack of a lapel flag for even a fleeting moment of embarrassment about openly expressing my patriotism or being too proud to capitulate to the feelings of those who need me to wear a lapel flag pin to reassure them that I am not part of an Islamic plot to take over the country. If there is one vote to gain by wearing this damn pin then I will wear it and love it.”

Since Obama has taken to wearing the lapel flag, his political opponents have redoubled their efforts in lapel flag wearing. Now Republicans are uniformly sporting a slightly larger and wavier style flag. These new Republican lapel flags seem to shout: “President Obama may be the sort of patriot who grudgingly wears a tiny flaccid sort of lapel flag, but I’m the sort of patriot who wears a lapel flag that flaps proudly in the inextinguishable breeze of freedom emanating perpetually from somewhere near my right clavicle.”

Rahm Emmanuel or someone equally high up must be onto this developing lapel flag dialectic, because just a few days ago Vice President Joe Biden was seen with one of the new Republican style lapel flags. This is clearly a trial balloon sort of move.

Clearly Biden was selected by the Obama team because he is perfect for the job of going out there, in a seemingly out of control way, to say something about something that the Obama wants to try out on the country without actually having to own up to it. Then if the whatever falls flat the administration can always say, “Oh that’s just Biden being Biden. Don’t mind him.” This is very similar to the way Dick Cheney used George Bush during the last administration.

A subtle strategy may be at work here. Is the administration using Biden as a stalking horse to draw the Republicans into a sort of lapel flag race. If the Republican lapel flags keep getting larger and wavier to out-do Biden’s lapel flag, will Obama give up lapel flags altogether, thereby appearing to be the only sane politician in a capital city in the throes of a crazy lapel flag obsession? Or will Obama’s own lapel flag suddenly explode like a Japanese robot toy into a huge mega kick ass lapel flag after Biden has tested the concept?