Congress Fiddles While Flags Don't Get Burned

Who needs Druids thumping drums at Stonehenge to know that summer’s here? All I need is Congress. Like the cherry trees blooming, like the swallows landing at Capistrano, Congress rallies ‘round a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, and I know exactly what season it is.

``Summer is a-comin’ in, loud sing, cuckoo!’’ wrote the anonymous Middle English poet. The Capitol Hill cuckoo chorus is in full throat once again, voting massively that ``Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.’’ Summer 2005 now joins summer 2000, summer 1997, summer 1995, summer 1990, and summer 1989 –- that was the year the Supreme Court ruled that you can no more ban burning the flag than you can burning charcoal briquets, although one act represents free speech and the other represents man’s eternal fascination with scorched facial hair.

It’s your bog-standard solution in search of a problem. There is no epidemic of flag-burning here. There is an epidemic of weeny Congressmen who, having accomplished virtually nothing of note, can now start running for reelection on the strength of voting for a flag-burning ban, and bellowing, ``Can my honorable opponent say [s]he would do the same?’’

I wonder how this would play in Iraq, where they’re still waiting for the constitutional amendment to ban sending soldiers to war with armored equipment not much stronger than a Lurex tank top. GI Joe was better kitted out than some of these folks.

What delights me about this amendment is that it always arrives just about the same time as the catalogues selling everything you need to celebrate the Fourth of July and the rest of the patriotic summer.

Check the catalogues, sign on to eBay –- what isn’t being hawked with a flag on it? Doormats, handkerchiefs, cocktail napkins, pocket knives, sheets, wastebaskets, dog shirts, chip-and-dip sets, bras, toilet seat covers. You can blow your nose on the flag, sop up your booze with it, sleep on it, stab someone with it, dress your dog in it, dump your trash in it, flush away under it and wipe your feet on it – but don’t even think about setting fire to it.

And what about the guy getting an all-American boner in his Old Glory swim trunks? Let’s run that up his flagpole and see whether Congress salutes.