Bob CollinsIt was Flag Day today and MPR’s Nikki Tundel documents how people celebrated the nation’s flag in this impressive slideshow.
Not surprisingly, many of those people who are, no doubt, patriotic in their love for the flag, nonetheless assaulted it at the same time.
Here are a few examples from Nikki’s slideshow and references to the U.S. Flag Code.
1) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.
We can quibble about what makes a piece of cloth a flag but if you use blue, add some stars, and red-and-white stripes and intend it to symbolize the American flag, you shouldn’t wear it.
2) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
3) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.
4) It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free.
5) Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
6) When displayed either horizontally or vertically against a wall, the union should be uppermost and to the flag’s own right, that is, to the observer’s left.
7) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
