Shocking news from California: Almost all employees of ABC/Disney, the parent corporation of ABC News, which put on the Democratic presidential debate this week, do not wear American flag lapel pins to work!!!!
As George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson pointed out during the debate, this is a very important issue that could affect… well… American flag lapel pin manufacturers.
Why do the employees of ABC/Disney hate the flag? Why do they hate America? Why aren’t they patriotic enough to put a little pin in their shirts every day?
Why are George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson working for a company filled with people who refuse to wear American flag lapel pins? Do Stephanopolous and Gibson hate America too?
Look! Here’s a photograph of George Stephanopolous on his TV show, This Week, and he is refusing to wear an American flag lapel pin! Look at this photo: No lapel pin! This is proof that Stephanopolous is a bad bad man who wants to destroy America!
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(Pssst. I’m being sarcastic. Patriotism is not established by wearing a lapel pin. It’s established through genuine good citizenship.)
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It’s sad that George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson, as they moderated the Democratic presidential debate this week, indulged in the kind of absurd pseudopatriotic flag-smearing that I parody above. Although I am being sarcastic in the questions I ask above, Stephanopolous and Gibson were not being sarcastic at all. They and the ABC News team decided to give this sort of cheap garbage the dignity of being treated as a genuine campaign issue.
This afternoon, from 4:00 to 7:00 in Burbank, a group of protesters will gather at the West Gate of ABC/Disney headquarters (West Alameda Gate, between S. Buena Vista and Keystone Streets). They will hand out American flag lapel pins to ABC employees to call attention to the shameful behavior of ABC News in this week’s presidential campaign debate.
Let’s get this straight: An American flag lapel pin is not proof of patriotism. It’s just a piece of jewelry. If an American flag lapel pin could prove someone to be qualified to be President of the United States, then George W. Bush would be the best darned president ever. Bush wears an American flag lapel pin every day, and that hasn’t prevented Bush from leading America into disaster after disaster.
George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson surely know this, but they were willing to indulge in pseudopatriotic scapegoating because they know that it titillates a certain portion of the TV audience. Shame on ABC News for indulging this sort of hateful nationalistic attack.
If I lived in Southern California, I’d be there at the gates of ABC/Disney today. My thanks to those who can make it.
