AMERICA
Old Glory up against it
GEOFFREY WAGNER
New York—When a symbol is severed from what it signifies, distortions result. This is the case with flag symbolism in America today, in connection with which a number of semantic blocks are churning through the courts.
Americans have created of their flag a repository of sentiment more likely to be touched off in England by the old attitude to royalty. The entire flag sensitivity in America today, culminating in the recent Flag Desecration Bill by Congressman Richard L. Roudebush, of Indiana, may be seen as an inarticulate need to create some uniting symbol of American plurality. But there are signs that the symbol-making mechanism is here running amok. Perhaps the first was when, some five years ago now, the Daughters of the American Revolution objected, successfully, to the manufacture of a girdle with the Stars and Stripes imprinted across it. Did this veto then apply to the hundreds of advertisements showing the flag. or aspects of it. in unbecoming and/or lubricious associations? Clothing manu- facturers, in particular, have always enjoyed climbing on the bandwagon of patriotism by throwing in, if not outright stars and stripes. some similar red, white and blue arrange- ment which it seems un-American to criti4 rise.
Indeed, when he was arrested in October, 1968, for flag-desecration outside a House Un-American Activities Committee, Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman claimed that the flag shirt he was wearing had been sold to him in a New York store. He was nevertheless charged with casting 'contempt' on the flag by wearing it as a shirt, even though Dale and Roy Rogers wear such in their popular Tv show and a current ad shows Raquel Welch wearing it more as a sort of enlarged G-string.
The situation got respectably rococo when a Midwest High School teacher of semantics defaced a simple piece of white cardboard on which he had written the words 'American Flag' dining a class on symbolism; he was, he said, showing how he could still remain loyal despite such symbolic action. He was reported by a student and received the full Roudebush penalty of a year in jail and a 51,000 fine.
Earlier this year a Long Island housewife, Mrs Elizabeth Hubner, was charged with desecration for flying the flag upside down (a well-known distress signal in the us armed forces) during the anti-Vietnam war mora- torium last October. 'I'm doing it,' said Mrs Hubner, 'because I feel the nation is in distress.' Her supporters pointed out that a nearby post of the American Legion also flew the flag upside down during the 'Pueblo' incident, and no members were arrested and held in jaiL However, Mrs Hubner was. A policeman wrote a summons on a traffic ticket and because her husband couldn't produce the $500 bail, Mrs Hubner went to jail in handcuffs. Yet Old Glory was flown upside down past the courthouse by firemen. This farcical arrest, which has now been reversed by a District Court Judge, was based (a) on a law that prohibits showing 'contempt, either by word or act, upon the flag,' and (b) on a climate of red-beck hostility to such personalities as Abbie Hoffman. Mrs Hubner may have been re- leased with her principles flying, but the fact is that almost anyone flourishing a flag in America today is taken as sympathetic to the right (if not the actual lunatic fringe) and as condoning the Vietnam war. It is a genuine infringement on the connotations of the symbol as established to date.
Earlier this year, also, the New York State court of appeals upheld the conviction of a Manhattan art dealer for displaying -art works injurious to the image of the flag. The dealer, Stephen Radich, was sentenced to sixty days in jail or a $500 fine. The offend- ing works, by a Marine Corps veteran turned sculptor, included a simulated penis %%rapped' in a flag. Judge James Gibson, denying the defendant the rights of the First Amendment (defending free speech, etc) in
this case, said: 'Whether a defendant thinks
so or not, a reasonable man would consider the enwrapping of a phallic symbol with the flag an act of dishonour . . .' And the latest case concerns an anti-war poster that says 'End Bad Breath' and shows Uncle Sam with his mouth wide open, and bombs for tonsils. There seems to be no end to the possi- bilities. When a symbol runs off the rails like
this. and is forced to mean what almost any- one pours into it, it is as welt to keep out of range. During the last war General Douglas NlacArthur refused to lower an American flag from an infantry position although begged to do so since it was being used as a marker by incoming Japanese planes. Today Old Glory wears a very thin symbol skin,
indeed.
Previous page
