So, today is Flag Day, and the Washington Post has a big front page photo of the “Star-Spangled Sailabration” in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, marking the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and the composition of our national anthem. The headline of the photo is “Oh, say, can they see” and it features sailors standing on the yards of a mast of a tall ship, with a flag on top. So far, so good.
But it’s the Mexican flag.
Now, Mexico has a fine flag and citizens of that country should honor it on their own Dia de la Bandera and foreigners should treat it with the respect due the symbol of a proud nation. But today is our Flag Day and the Post’s decision to feature a three-column, above-the-fold photo of another nation’s flag was an intentional act of contempt, spitting in the face of the yahoos by demonstrating their morally superior post-Americanism.
“But”, they’ll object, “we have more pictures online!” And they do, and many of them would have been appropriate as front-page art, such as this one, or this one, or this one. But they chose not to use them. It would have been better if they just ignored Flag Day altogether, as the Post, and the dinosaur media in general, usually do.
Just yesterday I was bemoaning the disappearance of newspapers. Maybe I was wrong.