Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Right-Wing Bloggers Agree. St. Louis Tea Party was Disrespectful of U.S. Flag

Some of my critics have been claiming that my previous post on Tea Partiers disrespecting the American Flag was "ignorant" because it was meant as a protest symbol of our country in distress. Of course, all you need to do is read the actual rules to know that flying the flag upside down as a protest is not acceptable according to those rules. But since some of my critics seem to like appeals to authority more than actual facts, let me point out how several right-wing bloggers responded to Iraq War Veteran Adam Kokesh flying the flag upside down at political rallies.

LT Nixon said the following:
Have they now convinced Iraq vets to hoist an upside down American flag... This symbolism is not about dissent against the US government, it's about disrespecting America.
This Ain's Hell has railed against Kokesh and said that he can't think of him without seeing the image of him holding the upside down flag.

Right-wing celebrity Michelle Malkin cited Kokesh holding the flag upside down as a reason why he was a "smear merchant."

And finally, blogger Carly Fiano claimed that Kokesh was "Anti-American and anti-military" because he held an upside down flag.

So it's pretty clear that the consensus among right-wing bloggers is that Kokesh disrespected the American flag despite the fact that Kokesh is a veteran and despite the fact that he was doing it as a sign of "America in distress." So the fact that some of them are attacking me now is nothing but egregious hypocrisy.

And just to be clear, I personally don't have anything against Kokesh or the tea party person who held the flag upside down. But the tea partiers consistently hide behind the flag (even chanting "where's your flag?" at the protest last Wednesday) and try to use appeals to "true patriotism" in place of having meaningful discussions. They're angry at me because they can no longer make this argument with a straight face. When they had a chance to protest any way they wanted, they chose to display the flag in a way that was disrespectful according to the very rules they claim to care about.

4 comments:

  1. Since you had "Dana Loesch" as a tag, I thought I'd tell you about her post yesterday regarding the USPS. She called the Post Office a "taspayer funded" entity. I knew this wasn't true but since she doesn't allow comments, I couldn't respond.

    Today, she changed her post to describe the USPS as a "quasi-government entity".

    Instead of showing some journalistic integrity by posting an "UPDATE" and pleading mea culpa, the Tea Party community organizer chose to simply change the wording.

    How can we believe anything from a group of people (Tea Partiers) who can't honestly report the size of their rallys, use hyperbole over factual information, champion edited videos as "proof" of wrong-doing and call themselves "the most civil people ever"?

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  2. Very interesting Russ. That's why we have to take screen-shots of the stuff they do. This isn't the first time Dana's completely changed some egregious charge without saying anything: one time she accused a woman (who she called a "union thug") of attacking a "patriot" and then simply deleted the post after it turned out that the "patriot" attacked the other lady first.

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  3. Dana Loesch spreading ingorance?? never! She has just as much integrity as Sarah Palin, oh wait...nevermind, haha

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  4. And the time she posted about our "troops" who were dragged through the streets, set on fire and hanged. Turns out they weren't "troops" - they were contractors working overseas.

    I emailed her knowing I'd not get a response or a correction. I was correct.

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