Month: June 2006

Week Thirty-Nine: How to Burn a Flag

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It’s Independence Day next week; expect flags and fireworks aplenty. Given the proximity of so much freely flowing flammable fabric to freely flying firecrackers (not to mention over-zealous barbecue builders), I would imagine that there would be more than a few accidental flag-burnings. On such a highly charged day of patriotism, the sight of Old Glory going up in smoke would probably be enough to start a riot, or worse, a war. But you need not worry about what the Government or the FBI (Flag-Burning Inspectors) might do to you, because this week the Senate narrowly voted not to accept new measures, passed by the House of Representatives, that would make the desecration of the US flag a crime punishable by court of law. Phew, thank heavens for that! And I must say, as an ineligible-to-vote tax-payer, that I’m so happy the American tax dollars are being spent debating such a critical issue, when they could be spent on, say, a proper debate on Iraq, or a national health service. Or impeachment of the President.

What happens when you burn a flag? Those who have advocated the ban (such as the Citizen’s Flag Alliance) tell us that thousands of people have died defending that flag, and that to desecrate it would be akin to desecrating their graves. In reality they did not die defending a flag, but a country, and a set of values which, let’s be fair, the country’s Government did not always uphold. If you burn the flag, the country does not also burn; in fact, a country does not really need a flag to survive, but a durable and representative political and economic system. A flag is but a symbol; though I do not doubt the psychological power of symbols (cf, the swastika). In fact the act of burning the flag is upheld in American law, after a 1989 ruling, as an expression of every American’s First Amendment rights. So flag-burning is actually considered free speech. So what else can be interpreted as free speech? If you rob someone in the street, could your argument be, well it was free speech, officer, I was simply making a point about the high crime rate in this area, officer.

Of course not. But if the law had been passed, can you imagine the legal wrangling? For example, the exact proportions of the US flag are enshrined in law. It has to be just so. If the flag you are burning has a defect, for example if it were longer than it should be, or if the red stripes were a little thicker than the white, or if the shade of blue was just a little too dark, would it legally count as an American flag? It’s a foolproof legal defense; the evidence has by then already been destroyed. Yet until the 1989 ruling, many states actually did have laws regulating proper use of the flag – exactly when and how it should be flown (only from sunrise to sunset), exactly how it should be folded, that it should not be turned into a tablecloth or a cuddly toy, all of those things that millions of flag-loving Americans openly flouted after 9/11.

This doesn’t mean that come July 4th, Americans everywhere will be building huge bonfires and throwing their star-spangled banners onto funeral pyres, a Guy Fawkes in Uncle Sam’s jacket. But it means they get to. So I think that people should be aware of exactly how to burn a flag. First of all, don’t just get out a lighter and set it on the ground. You have to have some TV cameras there, and a crowd of people who just want to be on the telly. You let the flames get bigger, then wave it around at the camera, dancing like a drunk who has just found a six-pack hidden under a bench, and then you invite your friends to jump up and down on it until the flames go out (be careful not to burn your feet; wear old shoes). Then you sing some random nonsense about Satan or Santa, climb onto a car, then all go indoors for nachos, beer and the big game. I know this sort of behaviour will undoubtedly upset the neighbours, but hey folks, it’s your First Amendment right, sob sob, God bless the Constitution and all that. In fact, why not combine Amendments One and Two, and shoot the flag as well?

I’ve got the perfect way for the flag-protectors to get their way. Why don’t they just try to pass a law that states that all American flags should be made from flame-proof material? Everyone’s a winner!

Week Thirty-Eight: Time to learn Spanish

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Watching the World Cup on the Mexican channels has been a real education this past week. I have not once turned over to the English-language channels, and am therefore utterly ignorant of anything that does not involve the World Cup or overly made-up and underly dressed-up women dancing around to loud cheering and leering by moustachioed hosts on the pretence that this has something to do with sport. I don’t miss the American news or the endless repeats, and I’m picking up some useful vocabulary too. “Delantero” means ‘striker’, “tiro penal” means ‘penalty’, and “goooooooooooollllll” means ‘I may be mistaken, but I do believe somebody has scored’.

I am going to buy a dictionary; it is about time I learnt Spanish. I cannot believe I have put it off thus far. I know I should probably learn to drive as well, but how am I going to understand the insults thrown my way on the freeway if I can’t speak Spanish? I see it everywhere, I hear it everywhere, so the problem of exposure will not be an issue. And watching these channels has made me realise that America really is bilingual, and I honestly don’t understand why this is not recognised on an official level. The TV stations are not being broadcast from Mexico – they are American. Sure, they are Mexico-centric as far as football and some shows are concerned, but they are for Spanish-speaking Americans. This is never more clear than in the adverts. Some of them are almost exactly the same as their Anglophone equivalents but re-shot with Spanish-speaking actors (such as the ones for Jack-in-the-Box), others are for products available to all Americans such as mobile-phone plans including maps of the US showing Spanish being spoken in every corner (giving the jarring impession that Spanish is actually the first and not the ‘minority’ language, as if this is some sort of parallel universe). There are certainly more football-themed commercials (unsurprising, being the World Cup), even poking fun at the English-speaking Americans’ distrust of football, such as one which shows a short Hispanic guy buying a new TV at WalMart, ending with a shot of him on the sofa with his large American buddy, who looks in horror at the screen and whines, “soccer??”

It is as though I have dipped my toe into a hidden country within the US. Its boundaries are clearly not simply linguistic, but encompass cultural things such as watching the World Cup. There really is a footy-mad media here in this land. People here really do want to watch soccer on TV with a can of cerveza and some nachos. It’s just that they speak Spanish. the mainstream English-speaking media has really failed to tap into this culture in any real way, and ‘soccer’ therefore becomes associated with the foreign, the non-American. Those who advocate the idea of ‘English First’, in which English is made the sole official language of the nation, do so because they are threatened by the Spanish speaking ‘other’, and their ways of life; yet it feels as though if you want to become a part of English-speaking America, you have to become part of their culture, watching baseball and American football, while relegating football/soccer to the foreign underclass.

Well, no more. I will learn Spanish, if this is the only way I can watch my footy, and I will speak to people at my local Mexican restaurant in their own tongue, learn their mannerisms, understand their culture. Of course, I could just pay the extra and get the cable package that has ESPN or Fox Soccer channel; but for one thing I’d be giving in to the man, and secondly I’d be missing out on those crazy Mexican commentators, like the one who actually gave birth today when Joe Cole scored what he descibed as a “golazo”, or ‘an absolute cracker’.

Week Thirty-Seven: Holiday in a Past Life

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I left England yesterday afternoon, landing in the cool air of San Francisco in the early evening, back at last with my wife, who I have missed enormously. My nose was in agony after eleven hours of allergies that had been all but invisible in London. The god of jetlags was trying to strike me a deal – sleep as soon as you get in the car, sleep as soon as you reach home, and your body clock will not be disrupted. Sod that, I replied, with purple eyes; I want a Taco Bell, and to sit in front of the TV watching the replay of Brazil vs Croatia in Mexican Spanish with a cup of tea and my wife. Now, after a night of heavy sleep and dreams of the restoration of English magic (Strange and Norrel, not Eriksson and McLaren), I am up; it is five in the morning, and still dark. You don’t get that in an English June.

It was a strange sensation being back. I felt like Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap, returning to a past life to live out old routines, old thinking. I’ve only been eight months gone, but I could ring the changes; London felt angrier, especially in the suburbs. The high density of St George flags in the windows and walls of Burnt Oak pointed to a bubbling defiance at the way things are going; far from being the reclamation from right-wing associations that the media is congratulating itself on, a simple scratch of the surface revealed that a lot of people felt divided and threatened by the surrent situation regarding the large number of immigrants that have very recently and very rapidly changed the character of many suburban areas. Poor immigrants arriving in poor areas, eyed suspiciously by poor locals who hear daily tales of muggings and knifings and free housing and exploitation of the NHS; I felt a tension brewing that I know is being echoed across the country, and the proliferation of St George’s crosses still appeared to be a declaration of some sort, ands it had nothing to do with Rooney’s foot.

I didn’t travel into Central London anywhere near as much as I had expected. The Underground’s prices had rocketed for one thing, but mainly it was because of all the people. It is simply too busy, with people charging all over the place with busy faces and busy frowns. Bus drivers were rude and unhelpful, and buses themselves were completely unequipped for temperatures above twenty degrees Celsius. New paint and advanced window technology have been employed to solve the sweaty bus problem, but surely a simple air-conditioning unit would suffice? Where’s all this extra money going, Ken? (I note this was not as much of a problem on the old but airy Routemasters) I attempted Oxford Street only once; I am the master of Oxford Street, and can zone out the people as though I’m walking through the Matrix, weaving swiftly through the crowds without being held up by a single person or being run over by a single errant taxi. My mind forges a deep connection to the mystical energy known as the OxForce. But this time my brain was telling me – why bother? You don’t need to be in crowds, Pete, you don’t like crowds. So on every subsequent trip downtown I would slip casually into the system of back alleys and short-cuts that I’ve grown to know over the years.

It was great to see my family; I managed to spend a good deal of time with them, keeping them updated of my new Californian life. My nephews and nieces are getting so much taller. I didn’t see as many of my friends as I would normally have done, but spent some quality time with the ones that mattered. I rattled through areas I’ve known my whole life, even going down to Watling Park for a quiet read by the stream where I used to play every day of my childhood. There was even a mangled shopping trolley rotting in its shallow, greasy waters. The park was full of dodgy hooded youths – but was it not ever thus? I could always map out that park in my mind as a kid, knowing which bridges had the most gluesniffers, which benches had the most winos and smackheads, which places you were most likely to be pushed into a thorny bush for having ginger hair. I drew a couple of pictures and left to watch the World Cup.

And now i’m back in Davis, and in a couple of hours will have to go back to work. I dread to see what has piled up in my absence, but I come armed with Cadbury’s Heroes, the shadow of jetlag and the symptoms of World Cup fever (‘you give me fifa, fifa all through the night’). I’ll have to dust the cobwebs and black widows from my bike, and write home with photos and wishes; but for now, I have a big pile of panini stickers, a cup of tea and some hob-nobs, and I’m going to watch some early-morning footy. And then, when the sun is fully up, it is back to reality.

Week Thirty-Six: World Cup, Flags and Broken Feet

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The hype is building here now for the 2006 Deutschland World Cup, and as I write Wayne Rooney’s foot is awaiting the results of its latest scan. Beers are being bought en masse from Tesco, armchairs being moved here and there to find the perfect position in front of the telly, and then there are the flags. I’ve never seen so many bloody flags.

They used to fly the Union Jack (more properly called the ‘Union Flag’; it’s only a ‘Jack’ when it’s on a ship). Now the navy blue has been thoroughly washed away, and only the red cross of St.George remains, and it is everywhere. Our house is probably the only one in the street which does not have at least one giant England flag hanging from the top windows, but some houses are completely decked out, I mean roof to roses in white and red. Cars all over suburban London are flying the flags, looking every bit like diplomatic vehicles (if that diplomacy includes throwing plastic chairs into Belgian fountains).

There are more England flags than I have ever seen. For decades people were afraid of flying it, thanks to the sinister associations it had with the National Front; slowly and surely, that association has been eroded. I hardly saw any in France 98, and for 2002 there were lots out alongside the Union flag, because the World Cup coincided with the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. By 2004, for the Euro in Portugal, the country had completely reclaimed the flag, and shops had cottoned onto this new patriotism in the same way that American shops had done, post 9/11. But this year? Five times as many, without a doubt.

But will they be up for long? Will England get very far, with or without Wayne’s foot? I hope so, of course, but I doubt they have been practising their penalties with too much enthusiasm. England cannot take penalties, and the Germans, unfortunately, can. So therefore I have predicted that England will go all the way to the Berlin final, dispatching Brazil along the way, where they will meet Germany, and it will come to penalties. The deciding penalty will be taken by Wayne Rooney, who will use his dodgy metatarsally-challenged foot, scuffing the ball weakly into scummer Lehmann’s arms. I’m so sorry, everybody. Mystic Pete has spoken. Enjoy the World Cup.