Friday, July 25, 2008

shove yer flag lapel pin already... !

I met Charles Krauthammer over a chess table about 10-12 years ago. He's as dreary in person as he projects on TV; but he's not incapable of projecting wry:
Obama will probably win. That snake in the grass Maliki just threw the election Obama's way. And he doesn't even wear an American flag lapel pin.
So le'me put to rest this bit of bovine excretia for you losers who actually believe wearing star-spangled bling is a testimony to your *cough* patriotism. I'm assuming most of you won't vote for Obama anyway and use the fact he was resistant to being bullied into adorning his finely tailored wear with cheap costume jewelry for even cheaper reasons as proof of his squishiness toward some kind of Old Glory nationalism. Your belief system is wholly similar to that of fundamentalist Christianists. That being the case, I refer you to the book of Matthew:
6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray
to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
The principle's the same: A man foisting his piety/patriotism on others, and expects others to respond in kind, merely displays a false pride. If you're keeping it real, others don't have to see you doing it. And I realize that's an over-simplification, particularly as it pertains to trolling for "low-information" voters in a presidential campaign.

One might note Obama wore his flag lapel pin during the Berlin speech, and probably now has to sleep with the thing. What's next then, a matching decoder ring?

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By the by, Matthew's admonition applies particularly well to the school-prayer debate.

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Update: Oh darn! That wasn't Krauthammer's quote after all, just a Kos writer's summary. Oh well! Guess Krauthammer isn't even wry.

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