On the American National Flag（在线收听）

     One of our great symbols is the American flag, 13 red and white ¹⁾stripes ²⁾corresponding to the number of original states on a ³⁾rectangular piece of cloth, one corner blue with 50 white stars for 50 states.

     You see the flag everywhere now, ⁴⁾ “what so proudly we hail.” It means the World Trade Center happened to all of us. “We’re proud to be Americans,” say flags on front ⁵⁾porches in small towns across the country. Some homes seem to have been built to fly the flag. This wouldn’t be complete without it; just perfect. “We’re American too” say the flags ⁶⁾inelegantly glued to the city apartment windows. The declaration of ⁷⁾patriotic intent is everywhere, the simplest as ⁸⁾persuasive as the displays where one was considered not enough. Rockefeller Center with 150 beauties is in show business, a stirring sight although it’s unlikely that management there loves our country more than the owner of the smallest small business, displaying just one.

     The Annin flag company makes most American flags. They have more business than they can do now. You don’t have to go to Annin to buy a flag though. Flag sales are a street corner cottage industry. ⁹⁾Furtive operatives set up shop, to them the buck means more than the ¹⁰⁾banner.

     The colors of our flag and the numbers of stars and stripes are ¹¹⁾ordained, but there is no rule regarding dimension. There are tiny flags on sticks made in China. This grand flag is so big on a building in New York that it had to be continued around the corner. This beauty hangs from the side wall of a fire house. And you wouldn’t want a dirty flag so they wash theirs.

     Everyone wants to be associated with the flag. America and Yale, America and ¹²⁾Episcopalians, America and ¹³⁾J.P. Morgan, America and ¹⁴⁾Maxell, America and the Ritz Tower.

     There are inevitably people who are more anxious to appear patriotic than to be patriotic. They tread a fine line between patriotism and commerce. The flag is everywhere in close ¹⁵⁾proximity to a business interest. It sells shoes and shoe repair, women’s dresses. The American flag invites ¹⁶⁾diners to foreign restaurants, Japanese, Italian, even Afghan.

     There is an official flag code but it is ¹⁷⁾routinely ignored. It is not proper to use the flag as a table cloth. It is not to be used as an ¹⁸⁾awning or a ¹⁹⁾canopy or plastered to the ²⁰⁾hood of a car. The code says the American flag is not to be used as ²¹⁾decorative clothing. Some find it ²²⁾irresistibly ²³⁾fashionable though and we are more amused than they.

This is how the star ²⁴⁾spangled banner was meant to be flown on the end of a pole of its own, free to wave ²⁵⁾majestically in our own free air.CE