There are many interesting things happening around this.
1. The Cinco de Mayo holiday celebrations in the US are at the urging of Corona, Budweiser & Doritos. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day, that would be in mid September.
2. The young men that were sent home were in violation of the Flag Code, i.e. breaking US law.
3. The vice principal of the HS that told the young men to turn their shirts inside out is of hispanic descent.
4. Mexican hertiage month in California is March, to coincide with Cesar Chavez's birthday.
5. The AZ law is not racist motivated. Mexico is a nation, Mexican is a nationality, not a race. Illegal aliens are illegal, Mexican nationals with green cards (like my future son in law) are resident aliens, people born in Mexico who become citizens are US citizens.
6. The young men may have had the intention of being provocative, but the hispanic people who are offended by the display of the US flag, in the US are the ones who have a problem.
7. We live in a country of simple minded people.
Excerpt from Flag Code FAQs.
Accordinng to the Flag Code, a flag is anything "by which the average person seeing the same without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag."
The words "flag, standard, colors, or ensign", as used herein, shall include any flag, standard, colors, ensign, or any picture or representation of either, or of any part or parts of either, made of any substance or represented on any substance, of any size evidently purporting to be either of said flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America or a picture or a representation of either, upon which shall be shown the colors, the stars and the stripes, in any number of either thereof, or of any part or parts of either, by which the average person seeing the same without deliberation may believe the same to represent the flag, colors, standard, or ensign of the United States of America.
The article covered on SFgate.com, the website of the San Francisco liberal (well only) newspaper has an article about this incident. The comments section shows about a 70% in favor of the kids, not the school. Do you think the paper is out of touch?
Read
here. In the last hour the article was moved off the front page and not listed in the sidebar either. The search function with key word "Morgan Hill" has the article and current 591 comments.
It would probably be inappropriate of me to post the vice principals Name, title, phone number and e-mail address, but it is listed in the comments section of the article linked at around 1130AM.
