Flag Waving

I hesitate to even mention this here, but there’s such a fuss being made about it right now it’s unavoidable. The Paris High School band put on a show Friday night called “Visions of World War II”. During the show, songs were performed representing all of the countries involved in the war. While these songs were being played, flags representing each country were displayed on the field — including a nazi flag.

Unfortunately, last Friday was Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and some people found this insulting. So far, we’ve been mentioned in just about every newspaper in the country as well as on MSNBC and CBS News.

It’s really sad that people are getting so upset by this. The whole point of the performance was to be patriotic and to honor the veterans of the war. All of the countries from the war were represented as a sort of history lesson. Out of the 7 minute show, the nazi flag was only shown for a total of 14 seconds. The show ended with a collection of patriotic American songs and the flying of the U.S. flag.

Of course when the media got a hold of it, the entire point of the show was lost and we ended up with headlines like this – Texas band performs with Nazi flag on Jewish new year. This has obviously led to a lot of misinformed people calling the office today. One man even demanded that our “nazi band director” be fired.

Oh well. Luckily, Americans as a society probably have the shortest attention spans in the world. Most people wake up in a whole new world every day. I’m sure that tomorrow everyone will find something else to scream about and Paris High School’s 15 minutes of fame will be over…