Crazy for the blue, white and red — and yellow fringe

Crazy for the blue, white and red — and yellow fringe
by David Benjamin

MADISON, Wis. — When he stood atop a pedestal for the national anthem, Tommie Smith, gold medalist in the 200 meters at the 1968 Olympics, raised a black-gloved fist. His gesture was mirrored by fellow African-American John Carlos, the bronze medalist.

The runner-up in the race, Australian Peter Norman, raised no fist but wore the same human-rights badge that Smith and Carlos had pinned to their jackets. Norman understood the Americans’ motives partly because he was sensitive and educated — but mostly because he had talked to them.

To TV viewers everywhere, however, those two raised fists posed questions neither Smith nor Carlos could ever answer. Their gesture was instantly swamped by emotion, wreathed in ambiguity and ill-reported by the press, who called it a “Black Power salute.” To the mass of white Americans, this protest was an act of sedition fomented by shadowy groups of angry Negroes — Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver — whose very names struck fear into their hearts.

Tommie Smith’s intention was to challenge injustice, inequality, police brutality and the tragic American tradition — older than the flag — of racial oppression.

I knew that. I read about it. I taped a poster of Smith and Carlos on the wall of my dorm room. But even then, I knew they had failed — because symbolism is a piss-poor way to communicate.

Quite possibly the least communicative of all American symbols is the flag. Everyone claims it. Every group bends it to their purposes. Nobody respects it enough to leave it up there on the pole, minding its own beeswax. In 1965, the civil-rights protesters who followed the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma — non-violent protesters beaten and gassed by state and local lawmen — carried the Stars and Stripes.
When violent white supremacists gathered this August in Charlottesville to celebrate racial hatred, they ecumenically waved, side-by-side, the Swastika of the Third Reich, the Confederate Stars and Bars, the banner of the Ku Klux Klan and the Red White and Blue of the US of A.

In our newest spasm of flag symbolism, a bunch of professional athletes, particularly in the National Football League, are “taking a knee” during the Star-Spangled Banner (which, by the way, has been the national anthem only since 1931. Really! Before that, peace and quiet).

The mass of white Americans perceive the NFL protest as an act of sedition fomented by shadowy groups of angry Negroes whose very names — Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Barack Obama — strike fear into their hearts.

The athletes leading this protest have never mentioned the soldiers, sailors, Marines and aviators they’re accused of “disrespecting.” They insist, rather, that they’re objecting to injustice, inequality, police brutality and the racial oppression that was bothering Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman (and me), 49 years ago.

But never mind. The NFL players’ message has ended up just as muddled as that of Smith and Carlos in’68. This is because symbolism tends to obscure the ideas it seeks to express, especially when the flag gets dragged in. I sympathize with the protest, and I also appreciate why most football fans are annoyed. Mostly, I feel sorry for the flag.

I love the flag. I figure I’ve pledged allegiance to it, without a qualm, at least 12,000 times. I like the way it looks, the way it stands out against any background, from the blue sky to the Green Monster. The hot and cold fields of red and blue in sharp contrast with all those bands and speckles of white are a composition remarkably daring and abstract. It’s no wonder that Betsy Ross’ needlework has long been a favorite motif for artists, from Childe Hassam to Jasper Johns. Old Glory just looks cool.

Trouble is, we’ve loved our flag to death, loading it with more sanctity than any slab of colored canvas can bear. We use it, overuse it and end up abusing it, in a thousand ways. I don’t like to see sweaty athletes wrapping themselves in the flag before running a victory lap. The flag is not clothing. I object to second-rate European hotels hanging the Stars and Stripes out front as a come-on to American tourists. The flag is not a billboard. I think the obligatory flag pin on every politician’s lapel is as phony as a three-dollar whore. The flag is not absolution.

There has been no greater abuse of Old Glory lately, of course, than the sight of Donald Trump fretting his hour upon the stage, a bank of folded flags as his backdrop, while declaring that neo-Nazis are “fine people,” that the guardians of the First Amendment are “enemies of the state,” and that it’s time to slam the golden door in the faces of “the homeless, tempest-tost.”

I wonder: In a church named after a disciple of Jesus, we kneel to show reverence for God. Why is it that, if we kneel in a football stadium named after an insurance company, we’re committing sacrilege?

A flag — especially the Stars and Stripes — is a symbol that means something different, literally, to everyone who sees it. The flag stands for blind loyalty and it stands for protest. It stands for black emancipation and white nationalism. It stands for our nation’s institutions and it flies in the face of the Establishment. It stands for the law and it fosters civil disobedience. It stands for fire stations and used-car lots. It stands for truth, but gives aid, comfort and a dazzling stage-set to the purveyors of bullshit.

A symbol that means so much to so many signifies everything, achieves nothing.

So, in due time, the NFL genuflections will fizzle or become ritual. The players will go on inflicting brain damage to amuse us. The owners will keep Colin Kaepernick — the original kneeler — from making a living. And somewhere, just about every day, a scared policeman will murder a black teenager, and get away with it.

Each killing will trigger a protest, which might help, though it probably won’t. But I’d prefer we keep the flag out of it.

We could reconcile many differences if we agreed to give the flag a rest. Raise it at dawn, on a regulation flagpole, with a little trumpet music and a quick salute. Lower it at twilight with a few bars of “Taps.” Fly it at half-mast every time a senator dies or a Second Amendment zealot slaughters a kindergarten. Make sure it waves over every cemetery, especially those that are filled, row upon row, with the honored dead. Drape it gently over the coffins of La David Johnson, Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson and Dustin Wright.

But otherwise, let it fade into the background. When the anthem plays, don’t fume over the kid in Section 115 who forgot to take off his cap. Don’t sweat it if your fellow fans scratch, fidget, talk, eat, chew gum, sing the wrong words, horse around or even kneel down to tie a shoe. Maybe, just to spare the aggravation, you should use the interlude to hit the concourse — take a leak, buy a $10 cup of light beer. After all, it’s only a game, the lyrics don’t really scan, and all this mishigoss boils down to a little bit of muslin flapping in the breeze.