E-mails dripping with venom -- red, white and blue venom, that is -- continue to trickle in a week after we ran an American flag in the paper on Memorial Day.
It ran in a classified advertising section that contained memoriams. In case you didn't see it, it looked like the one hanging on the Pentagon in the picture at right. It had the stars in the upper left-hand corner.
Some emails have accused us of being unpatriotic but most have accused us of being just plain stupid.
I'm the first to admit that we do some dumb things occasionally but the way we ran this flag wasn't one of them.
The flag we ran is meant to be hung vertically and, according to flag etiquette rules, "When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left. When displayed in a window it should be displayed in the same way, that is with the union or blue field to the left of the observer in the street."
And that is exactly what we did.
Anyway, if anyone asks you (as they click their tongue) if you saw the way the Chronicle ran the American flag on Memorial Day, please tell them what I have just told you.
And next time, I think we will run the flag as it is traditionally seen: horizontally.
(Geez. It's been a long time since I posted something new here.
If you've been hanging with me, thanks.)
2 comments:
I get so tired Flag Nazis. These hyper-patriots make me want to burn one right in front of their big RED noses just to piss them off and watch their eyebrows fly off.
Patti -
Good call, and great explanation of proper flag usage.
The people who complain loudest about that type of thing are almost always the people who get offended when told THEY'RE being stupid and wrong.
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