No, the US Olympic Team will not dip the flag to the Queen of England and other dignitaries at the opening ceremonies: but even the hint that it might occasioned another Outrage Piece from Fox’s culture warrior Todd Starnes. An hour later Fox News had made it the leading headline on their Web site.

Apparently it is a tradition for many nations to dip the flag at Olympic opening ceremonies as a sign of respect to the hosts, but the US has not done it for decades - not since we stopped dipping the flag at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as a snub to Hitler. At the thought that we might be doing so this time, Fox Nation, of course, went into a patriotic, this-flag-bows-to-no-one frenzy, some of them slamming the British as if it were their fault (quite rudely, since Britain held out alone against the Nazis for months before the US even entered the Second World War, besides being our only real ally in Iraq):

Or, of course, a lot of them blamed the change in tradition on Obama.

All sound and fury, signifying nothing. They are not going to dip the flag. And I hope the British tabloids don’t interpret it as disrespect, because otherwise they’ll be gorging on this one tomorrow the way they gorged on Mitt Romney today.