A drunk military man should order gallons and put out more flags in order to increase his military splendour.
-Unnamed Chinese sage, quoted by Evelyn Waugh in the preface to his novel Put Out More Flags
I couldn't remember the exact wording of that quote. But an address by Barack Obama on the subject of patriotism yesterday brought it to mind. I put the words I knew into Google and hoped for the best. Turns out it wasn't the first time I've used it -- I guess I remembered it perfectly at one time and, yes, I ran the full quote through Google again to doublecheck.
I found it in the comment thread to this bit of ridiculousness first published in the Houston Chronicle, relayed by Think Progress:
One thing Bush likes to do in the Gulf Coast is hand out American flags to families rebuilding their houses. Long before he shows up, Bush’s advance team scouts the non-hostile property owners in a neighborhood, and later, the president drops by and gives the family a flag. The White House thinks this makes for good pictures — and maybe it did, a month after the storm. But a year and half later, with the region still a mess and so many people displaced, it seems a little tone-deaf to be handing out flags — politically, it does invite comparisons to what Bush isn’t doing in the region.
Put out more flags...
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