I Pledge Allegiance
Growing up in “love it or leave it” America, I always found the zealotry around the U.S. flag rather excessive, although I was thoroughly imbued with the principles of respect embodied in law: don’t let the flag touch the ground, don’t burn the flag, don’t mutilate the flag, don’t fly the flag upside-down except as a distress signal, take your hat off and put your hand over your heart when saluting the flag or reciting the pledge of allegiance or singing the national anthem. . . . It’s still all a little excessive, but patriotism is very important to Americans. At university, I took a course studying the First Amendment, the one about freedom of speech, and had to read excepts of Supreme Court decisions overturning arrests, prosecutions, and laws regarding the misuse of the flag: protestors wearing a flag patch over their crotch or burning a flag on the steps of one courthouse or another or in front of their draft board’s offices. As a result, a lot of the 1960’s-70’s jingoism the flag had come to embody was lost, watering down the flag’s iconic status, not wholly, but enough. The flag was something you saw at civic assemblies and sporting events and didn’t pay much attention to. Then we had September 11 and the flag was everywhere. M. and I both remember this one tow truck we’d often see, cruising up and down the avenues, covered with flags, large and small, whipping out behind the truck as it went by. We also remember the Sikh cab drivers who found themselves so fearful of being mistaken for Muslims they’d put a flag decal or sticker up in the cab, visible to their passengers, hoping to deflect a conversation or confrontation over what should be done to terrorists.

M. tells me the Australian flag was never so ubiquitous as it was after we moved here, post-Bali, and I well remember the high visibility it gained during the Cronulla riots. That was pretty scary, but what was worse was how the government dog-whistled their support for the bigots abusing their flag. And now they’re at it again.

The Big Day Out is a music festival. It travels around the capital cities during the summer, including the Sydney Australia Day weekend concert. Name acts from around the world participate, as well as local bands getting a bit of exposure. It’s not quite the same thing as Homebake, a multi-band concert devoted to promoting Australian performers, but it’s very popular. Last year, the Big Day Out took place not long after the Cronulla riots and there was some trouble with drunken Neanderthals promoting their own violent version of patriotism. This year, BDO has, in effect banned the flag.

Well, not really, unless you’re a politician and can’t read, or a patriotic zealot and can’t be bothered to read, or a bigot intent on promoting hate and violence.

It isn’t a government-sponsored event, and flying the flag isn’t a prerequisite for staging the shows, and if trouble-makers made the flag a security issue last year, the organizers are within their rights to request that concert attendees don’t cause a similar problem again this year. If you want to bring a flag to a gathering, stage it yourself or go to a patriotic event.

Maybe we need a nice Jimi Hendrix version of “Advance, Australia Fair” to lighten things up.