Here's my point. The attack on Obama's patriotism is a false and inconsistent one, made by holding Obama to a standard that is not applied to John McCain.
1) Obama is an evil non-patriot because he did not wear a flag pin? Really? He did give a reason for it, as I recall, saying that the flag pin was no substitute for real patriotism.
But I notice that John McCain is almost never seen with a flag pin. So by the logic of the attack on Obama, Mr. McCain is no patriot!
The pictures are current ones found by a simple Google search on the term
2) Obama is an evil non-patriot because he failed to place his hand on his heart during a performance of the Star Spangled Banner? Well, a lot of us might be guilty of that if the crowd at last week's Dodger game is any indication. I didn't even know the Star Spangled Banner when I was a public school student in the Jim Crow South (North Carolina). We would face the teacher and recite the Lord's Prayer (or maybe it was Psalm 23) every day, then sing 'Jesus Loves Me'. Imagine my surprise when we moved to New Jersey! We sang the Star Spangled Banner, which I had never heard, without placing hand on heart, and then recited the pledge, which I had never heard, with hand on heart. This Obama story is true according to ABC News video available at Snopes but I have to say it does not bother me. He has not repeated the error, if error it was.
Again, as a parenthesis, the Pledge was written by a Christian Socialist in 1892, and has been modified at least twice. This means that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and sixteen other Presidents never even recited the Pledge, and yet somehow managed to be patriots. Several traitors probably did recite the pledge, including Aldrich Ames, Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Jonathan Pollard, and Robert Hanssen. The Pledge does not protect us from treason and it is no test of a patriot.
One more thing, the Star Spangled Banner became the national anthem in 1931. None of those presidents above would have stood to attention for it any more than they did for the non-existent Pledge.
3) Obama is an evil non-patriot because he removed the flag from his airplane? The airplane is on long-term charter from North American Airlines and is an American-made Boeing 757 which had the trademarked corporate logo of North American Airlines on the tail. The logo is part of a cartoon of a flag with 13 stripes and part of the field of stars. I notice that the field of stars is five stars high in a straight vertical array, something no American flag has had since the 38-star flag of 1877-1889, but I digress. So Obama is an evil non-patriot because he removed a corporate logo that wasn't much of a flag to start with. Nonsense.
4) Obama is an evil non-patriot because he went to the church pastored by Reverend Wright, who uttered the words 'God damn America!'. I don't blame Obama for Wright's outbursts. Outbursts are what good preachers do! The God Damn America phrase is almost always quoted without context, and was part of a sermon about the unchanging nature of God, and the failures of government. Watch it if you dare, it is an entertaining and poigniant 7 minutes! Reverend Wright is actually pretty close to mainstream American in his ideas about what's important and what we do about it. He was also widely criticized for his sermon about 'chickens coming home to roost' after 9-11, but he was more nearly right than many commentators. Remember, the preachers McCain has sought out, like the late Jerry Falwell and the still living Pat Robertson were blaming a very odd assortment of culprits indeed: pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians and the ACLU! So, I can forgive Obama, and Reverend Wright for the over-the-top rhetoric. I note that John McCain's minister Pastor Dan Yeary, does too.
5) Lastly, Obama is an evil Chicago machine politician? That's not what the machine thinks, apparently.
Thus endeth the rant.
Dorrsrebellion
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