Did you notice that many Republicans didn’t seem to be wearing flag pins during the State of the Union address? Most notably missing was John Boehner’s. Addicting info has a nice still shot that shows it either blends in with his suit or it’s clearly missing. Note that on Fox News’ article, they used a picture that shows the area covered by his hand. This brings up an interesting point- given Fox News’ past obsession with the flag pin, how big a deal would this be if Boehner was a Democrat? Let’s review.
Let’s go back to the campaign of 2008. In late 2007, then-Senator Obama refused to wear a flag pin because he felt it had become a perverse substitute for true patriotism. This did not sit well with Fox News and kicked off attacks on him over it. It was still a hot topic with them almost two weeks later. Months later, when Obama was wearing it again, it was a big deal to them again. The flag pin craze may have hit its most ridiculous peak when Steve Doocy held a pin-measuring contest between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.
How ridiculous was it? Here’s a video of how bad it got with Chris Wallace alone. Despite admitting to Obama’s face that it was just a distraction, I never saw much evidence of him condemning Fox News for such “distractions,” or calling out a right-wing guest who joined in the attacks on other shows. Bill O’Reilly declared himself a Patriot while not wearing a Flag Pin and yet participated in the farce. Huffpo has a pretty good rundown of who has room to talk…
Apparently only three of their host and full-time contributors who discussed it- pro or con- wore one themselves: Brit Hume, Neil Cavuto and Karl Rove.
Did we mention that we never heard anyone on Fox attacking McCain when he forgot his towards the end of the 2008 campaign? So we have strike one…
Now let’s fast-forward a bit. Remember the employee who was allegedly fired over for refusing to remove a flag pin? Remember Gretchen Carlson’s astonishment over the “propensity” for that kind of disrespect towards a “symbol of patriotism?” I noticed it wasn’t there when three candidates- Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul were all going without a flag pin – and on Flag Day. In fact, I didn’t hear a peep about their patriotism, did you? From anyone? Come to think of it, Gingrich seems to regularly forget his pin. He’s not wearing one in the picture for this article, either. Or in this interview with pinless Sean Hannity. Romney and Paul forgot theirs as recently as the SC Primary, some bloggers even cited that as a reason Romney lost. But not Fox News…
The flag pin is apparently so important that there’s a conspiracy against it, yet no problem when Republicans won’t wear it by choice? Strike two.
Strike three, of course… is where both this article and the timeline come full circle. We know Obama would never hear the end of not wearing his pin during a presidential campaign, because well… scroll back up and read that passage about the 2008 campaign again. So why did Boehner get a pass? For the same reason McCain, and all the other Republicans/FNC hosts did: The perfect one-word summary is Bill Maher’s coined word “IOKIYAR.” How did we ever get along without that word?
Itâs frightening to think that we even have a fraction of the population that would say you know I was going to vote for Obama until Sean pointed that he didnât wear a flag pin.
@ doors17: only the ones purchased at Wal-Mart . . .
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Are all America flag pins made in China?
Because vapid people need someone to tell them what’s what.
