Buy a flag...puleeze!

Now, now, before you get on your high PC horse, I want to let you know that I bounced the term 'flaggot' off several bright gay men and they found it quite funny. Besides, the term has nothing to do with sexual preference. Heck, it has nothing to with sex at all. It has to do with all those the frenzied flag-buying consumers.

Where did they all go?

After September 11, the odd media and consumer fixation on flag acquistion rather repelled me. People were waiting in long lines to get flags. Special ordering flags. Making sure they had more flags than their neighbors. Bigger, better flags. Because when a nation is in physical and financial peril, it's important to have more flags on your home and pickup truck than the U.N.

Don't get me wrong. The idea of a little red, white, and blue to express solidarity against "The Evil One" (Dubya's melodrama is absolutely relentless) is not an inherently bad thing. But the scramble to buy up flags like they were "Tickle-Me-Uncle Sam dolls " is a perverse reaction to a tragic situation.

And now every retail establishment has mountains of this US of A paraphernalia collecting dust. Where are the more-more-more flaggots now? They couldn't have enough flags. These consumers can never have enough of anything. So why are they letting this merchandise languish?

Because it's readily available and to have more would not make them the "Special Ones" in their social milieu. And that's the bone I have to pick with the flaggots. Their flag-waving is not a symbol of solidarity but of one-upmanship, the opposite of the solidarity they profess.

So, I have a challenge to all of you flaggots out there. You started this flag demand. You should end it. Buy up flagphernalia wherever you find it. Buy it until you hate the idea of buying any more. Buy it until the pride to own it is replaced with the pride of being part of what it represents. Buy it until it means something.

And get it all the hell out of my way at the grocery store, already. Geesch.