AFP: An ‘Epidemic’ of Flags
Charles Johnson
Tue Jul 4, 2006 at 5:30 pm PDT • Views: 351
Agence France Presse likens the display of US flags on the Fourth of July to an outbreak of a deadly disease: US ‘flag epidemic’ reaches peak on Fourth of July. (Hat tip: JP.)
WASHINGTON (AFP) - It’s a true epidemic: the red, white and blue, stars-and-stripes banners are everywhere in the United States - on house facades, front lawns, cars and clothes.
Hitting an high point on the July 4 US Independence Day holiday, it is a genuine phenomenon of American national pride that, inevitably, gets a good but also sometimes unwanted boost from commercial exploitation.
“It’s a little strange, this obsession of the flag,” French author Bernard-Henri Levy wrote after traveling across the country. “Everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers, an epidemic of flags that has spread throughout the city,” Levy wrote in “American Vertigo” of the riot of banners he saw.
UPDATE at 7/4/06 5:36:07 pm:
Look out! It’s another one! Don’t get too close to it!
In your eye, AFP.
Frank says: