My dad turned on CNN earlier this evening and Nancy Grace (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/nancy.grace/) was on. Now, I'd never seen the show before, but immediately I disliked this woman. My dislike turned to mild hatred when she brought up this controversy about Donald Trump flying the American flag "too high" at some hotel he owns in Palm Beach. Why is this whole situation so ridiculous? Let me explain.
First of all, there is a reason that Palm Beach has regulations about how tall a flag pole can be. There are reasons that most cities have regulations about things like that. It is a possible danger, and yes, it's an aesthetic thing too. The city I live in doesn't allow billboards along the roads because it can be ugly. The shed in my backyard has to be below a certain height because nobody wants to look across the street and see a 20-foot-tall monstrosity beyond the neighbor's fence. Some people may think such laws are stupid, but I say who cares? Who's it hurting? There are more important battles to fight.
But Mr. Trump is ignoring the accumulation of fines he's received because of the flag (it's around $23,000 now... he can afford it though, eh?) and refuses to take it down. He defends this by saying that it's a matter of patriotism...NO, it's not. Some multi-billionaire sits on his haunches, hoists up a flag and thinks he's defending his patriotism by refusing to lower it a couple feet? What on Earth is patriotic about that? Think of how many people he must have stepped on and screwed over to get so rich. Nobody with that much money could possibly remain humble. What's patriotic is returning to Earth and experiencing the hardships that normal Americans face every day.
Of course Nancy was drooling all over herself while interviewing Trump on her show, saying things like "Promise me you will get a jury of twelve for this show! Who knows what some wack judge will decide in a case like this? DON'T LET THEM TAKE THIS AWAY FROM YOU!!"
Oh, poor Donald. If they take his flag away he'll just have nothing to live for anymore. Not his $6 billion fortune, not his successfully idiotic reality show, not even his fourteen-year-old wife (am I exaggerating?). Wouldn't it just be an absolute shame, an unpatriotic abomination, if the court of Palm Beach ordered him to lower that flag? I can't even imagine the horror.
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Ha ha... I see what you mean. I don't get the feeling Donald Trump is the kind of guy who defends patriotism unless he has something to gain from it... and, yeah, he could just put up a small flagpole, or find a different way to display the flag. That's ridiculus.
And, yeah, Nancy Grace is scary. Amy Poehler does a good impression of her on SNL - "Somebody moved my chair."
While Mr. Trump certainly does not earn my sympathy, I do have to support him on this because regulations such as how high you can fly a flag and whether you can put a billboard on your road-adjacent property implicate first amendment concerns.
Although it is content neutral (i.e. they're not allowing an American flag but banning a Soviet flag), it still requires intermediate scrutiny to survive first amendment review. Basically, that means that the government needs a really good reason to maintain laws about how high you fly your flag or whether you can build a billboard. Aesthetics do not cut it.
Even if they do have a pretty good reason for the regulation (like obstacle for low-flying air craft - I don't know how high this flag pole is) the government still must show that it couldn't avoid the problem without implicating the first amendment (like requiring lights on the pole to warn planes).
Just to reiterate, I do not consider Donald Trump sympathetic, but then neither was Larry Flynt. The fact of the matter is that its the people that really push the envelope of decency that ensure that the rest of us can be free to communicate as we see fit, whether its on this website or displaying a symbol high up on a flag pole.
I admit that I'm incredibly biased.
I don't remember them even saying how high the flag was - they just showed pictures and video clips. To me it looked to be the height of a typical roller coaster... maybe 100 ft. (that could be an exaggeration, but that's what it looked like to me.) You're right about the aesthetics of it not being a good reason, and I do think that requiring some kind of light on the flag pole would make more sense. Ultimately it's more important to protect the Constitution and its Amendments...
I am just so pissed that Trump would do something like that as a publicity stunt (which I definitely believe it is) and call it patriotism...heh. Oh well. But anyway, good point.
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