Posted by EvanW219 on BWJBJ board:

You're a Grand Old Apparel!

At halftime of the Giants-Niners opener on ESPN, Bon Jovi performed. Guitar wallah Richie Sambora, the one who's married to Heather Locklear -- she must see something in him, or at least in his wallet -- took the stage with an American flag wrapped around his waist. He strutted around thrusting out his butt, and thus the flag draped over his butt, at the crowd.

Now maybe somewhere in Richie Sambora's fuzzy cranial cavity the idea of wearing an American flag seemed like a 9/11 gesture. Or maybe it seemed like a way to get attention. Or maybe Richie Sambora was trying to tell us he thinks the American flag can kiss his butt. At any rate, this was a huge violation of flag protocol, and TMQ was distressed that the ESPN announcers said nothing, gushing about Bon Jovi while pretending the flag-on-the-butt wasn't happening.

According to the American Flag Code, Section 8(d), "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel." People who handle the flag -- soldiers, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, building directors and so on -- take the Flag Code very seriously. The flag is never to touch the ground; it can only fly after dark if lit by a bright light; there are approved and unapproved ways of folding and washing it, and so on. Flag-like patterns -- stars-and-stripes ski caps, swimsuits, whatever -- are unrestricted, since they can't be mistaken for actual flags. But the flag itself is a special object and should "never be used as wearing apparel."

Saying the flag can't be worn is different from saying it can't be burned. The First Amendment clearly protects the right to destroy the flag as a gesture of political speech, as the Supreme Court has ruled several times, most recently in 1990. The Court's ruling that year, striking down an anti-flag-burning law passed by Congress, enunciated a broad First Amendment license regarding political speech and the flag, but left open employment of the Flag Code to regulate propriety.

Today the version of the Flag Code linked to above is law in the District of Columbia and in any state that has not passed a successor code. The Giants-Niners game occurred in New Jersey, and the New Jersey state attorney general's office told TMQ accomplice and The New Republic super-intern Spencer Ackerman that Jersey has no flag code to supersede the D.C. code. Thus, that code was in effect at Giants Stadium, and Sambora broke it. (If Sambora was making some kind of political statement, he neglected to mention anything about it to anyone.)

Bad enough that Jon Bon Jovi didn't tell his employee, "For God's sake man, show a little respect." Bad enough that the NFL front office, with control over the event, didn't tell Sambora to show some respect or stay in the green room. Bad enough that the ESPN announcing team didn't know what to say. Bad enough that so few Americans know what's in the code governing the flag they claim to love that this wasn't a controversy the next day.

Worst, American Forces Network beamed that game around the world to the dozens of distant nations where selfless men and women of the U.S. military have gone to defend the kind of freedom that allows people like Sambora to become exceptionally rich by making loud, unintelligible noises. Soldiers watching the game in Kandahar or at the Bagram fire base -- watching with one ear cocked toward the perimeter for the freedom-hating fanatics they are risking their lives to stop -- must have been disgusted to see everyone clapping and gushing, while the American flag was wrapped around some rich punk's butt.