Big flag? I threw it against the wall, but readers said it didn’t stick. It stunk.
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Version 0 of 1. I ran it up the flag pole to see whether people would salute it. They did. You know that salute people give you when you cut them off in traffic? That’s what I got. I thought the idea had merit. As I wrote in a column earlier this month, how about if on June 14, 2016, we raise a massive American flag to the top of the Washington Monument and let it fly there for the day? No, said many readers. [Oh say, wouldn’t you like to see a huge flag fly from the Washington Monument?] “Please don’t destroy the Washington Monument’s elegant lines with a flag,” one commenter wrote. “It’s surrounded by flags at the base. Isn’t that enough?” “Saddam Hussein would create a spectacle like that,” wrote another. A retired veteran said, “This turns the flag into a novelty item, sort of like those huge flags some car dealers fly.” I heard from a few supporters — “DO THIS!” wrote one — but most readers were lukewarm or downright hostile. I found this interesting, given that Washingtonians already did it once, 100 years ago. In 1916, sailors hoisted a 38-by-60-foot Stars and Stripes to the top of the monument. It was the centerpiece of a Flag Day parade in which more than 35,000 people marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. Why is something that was seen as impressive and desirable in 1916 considered tacky by many people in 2016? Alan Kraut, a professor of history at American University, said we should consider the circumstances of the 1916 display. War was raging in Europe and Americans were wondering whether they would be drawn into it. “In the best of times, some gestures seem corny,” he said. “But there are moments when something happens and everyone is invested in it and it no longer seems so corny.” The obvious example is 9/11. American flags bloomed across the landscape. It’s the rare U.S. politician today who doesn’t sport a flag pin on the lapel. So, in 1916, there was a war on — or soon would be. (The United States entered the Great War in April 1917.) But aren’t we sort of at war now? “We’re sort of at war, but are we really, when most Americans in their lives notice no difference and are asked to make no sacrifice?” Kraut said. Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University, will soon publish a book on opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I. He pointed out the unique details of that 1916 parade and flag-raising, with Woodrow Wilson marching with a flag himself and delivering a speech criticizing “hyphenated Americans” — German-Americans, Jewish-Americans, etc. — whose loyalty might be suspect. “Unlike in 1915, now we think about flag-waving as very connected to the military and sacrifice and all that,” Kazin said. “Whereas in 1915 the United States had not been in a major war overseas ever, and not in a major war since the Civil War — and the American flag was only one side’s flag.” So, the flag may have had a different meaning to Americans then. Over the ensuing decades, the United States fought in more overseas wars and more Americans served in uniform. But there was something else, too. People seemed to have a different mind-set then, not just about the flag but about communal displays. I’d love to chat with participants in the 1916 event. I’d have to be careful not to insult them, though. The people back then can seem kind of overly sentimental, non-questioning, accepting. Just watch an old newsreel: There’s that jaunty, almost naive confidence. It’s refreshingly non-snarky, but also kind of hokey. “I think part of what you’re talking about is simply a difference in rhetorical style,” Kraut said. When Kraut teaches 20th-century history, he plays students a 1936 fireside chat from Franklin Roosevelt. “It’s a beautiful piece of mid-20th-century political rhetoric,” he said. “No president would address the American public quite that way today.” The language strikes us now as corny, “but certainly to those who listened to Roosevelt on their radio in 1936 it may have been comforting,” Kraut said. Craig Harmon, the local history buff who has been trying to convince the powers that be that they should do this, hasn’t let the critics get him down. He said he has found a company in Texas that can make a big flag and a wind tunnel in College Park, Md., willing to test the concept. “I’m trying to eliminate all the hurdles, ease people’s concerns about what might happen if you raise it up,” he told me. But Craig, I said, it seems that most Americans just don’t think that way anymore. “That’s the whole reason to do it, because there has been this lack of patriotism,” he said. “The flag is the umbrella under which everything operates. If you can’t celebrate that, what’s the point?” I just think it would be cool. Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. |