June 23, 2015, will go down as the day America’s corporate overlords realized products bearing the symbol of the Confederate battle flag are not cool. I was on vacation on California’s central coast when the flags quietly seceded from poles and license plates and Amazon from sea to shining sea. The problem is, I had promised friends that we could burn one of them dumb flags at my house on Fourth of July. So, although it was encouraging to see all these folks noticing for the first time that the Confederate flag is somehow seen, by some, as something other than a mere reminder of the rich heritage of the South, and wingnut Republican elected officials coming to Jesus on the subject of the traitor flag, it left me high and dry.
Enter Google. where I typed in “Confederate Flag” and “Bakersfield” and up pops rightwing sites, including conspiracy theory clearinghouse Breitbart.com argle-barglling that there is only store still bravely selling rebel flag shit: Flag and Sign store, in Bakersfield. Yahoo! Hence, on our way back down the coast to LA, I whined and whined until Mark agreed to take the detour into Bakersfield where it was 106 degrees. Apparently, the cousin-humping bubbas in Bakersfield realized there was a reckonin’ a-comin’, so bum rushed the flag store to stock up on traitor flag shit, and stock was running low! Amazon, KMArt, were all discontinuing loser racist flag paraphernalia as well. EVEN WALMART, which is like Mecca for racist assholes, followed suit. “Et tu, Brute?” the bigots would ask Walmart, if they could read.
Bakersfield signs and flags was not really a “store” so much as an open-air kiosk, because as if spending my hard-earned money on a fckng confederate flag wasn’t miserable enough, the 106 degree temp was there to help. Besides the rebel flag, the kiosk offered many other non-racist items, like Navy and Marine flags and second amendment warning signs.
All I wanted to do was throw my cash on the counter and skedaddle. Naturally, the brave patriot who ran the “store” had to lift up the gross package and say loudly “IS THIS YOUR REBEL FLAG?” Of course it i my fckng rebel flag, I just HANDED IT TO HIM. He then proceeded to explain to me how the GOVERNMENT CLOSED DOWN ALL THE CONFEDERATE FLAG FACTORIES. Specifically, Valley Forge Flag Company, one of the big flag-makers what supplies all those companies. Gonna have to sew your Confederate flags yourselves, until tyrant Obama bans blue and red threadThe liebrul truth is, Valley Forge Flag Company made the decision to stop manufacturing the stupid flag. Here is their statement:
“When you have a sea change moment like you have with the tragedy in Charleston, we felt it was simply the right thing to do,” Valley Forge Vice President Reggie VandenBosch said. “We don’t want to do anything that causes pain or disunity for people.”
Huh. But this guy knew what was what and kept insisting that Obama shut down those flag factories .Don’t believe me? My boyfriend was taping it on his Obamaphone:
I mumbled something about how I think you can still buy rebel flags in Walmart’s secret Jade Helm tunnels, if you can get by the PRC troops ready to spring into action. I said out loud something about the government actually not shutting down the flag factories, but free market businesses making the decision to sell them or not. I mean, he wasn’t selling and I wasn’t buying illegal goods, wuz we? Out here in the open like this?? He kept insisting that NO it was not a free market decision, but rather the GOVERNMENT.
Then I asked something like these here flags ARE made in America, right? Answer: “Some are, some aren’t.” SOME ARE AND SOME AREN’T’? CAN I HAVE ONE OF THE ONES THAT ARE, PLEASE? No, because they do not exist. The major maker of confederate flags is China, our sworn enemy and trading partner, Yes, it IS especially ironic that this cheap-ass rebel flags was produced in some shitty Chinese sweatshop — a double homage to slavery. Now that everybody except this fckng guy’s “secret manufacturer” in China, has decreed that it won’t make any more Confederate flags? Great, ‘cuz there’s now a job opportunity for a Betsy Ross of the Lost Cause. Coulter? Either of the Palin wimmenz? One L? C’mon, where’s your fucked up patriotism? Get out your needles. (No, not THAT one, Bristol).
Then we had a trading of ideas about how the Republican party’s slavering devotion to corporate “freedom,” which has allowed American businesses to move every last U.S. manufacturing job to China, is the #1 eason why China has become so powerful. Unless it’s that time Ronald Reagan borrowed squllions of dollars from China in order to keep our government running while pretending not to raise taxes–a debt I believe we still haven’t paid off. HAHAHA JUST KIDDING.
The Confederate flag just keeps slithering off flagpoles and license plates and out of retail stores, but I got mine.
The flag was so cheap and gross, it took half a can of lighter fluid to get it to actually burn. It wanted to melt.
There is one less Confederate battle flag in the world.
Alas, I have a grim confidence that the ol’ invisible hand will soon tap a new supplier of hate merchandise on the shoulder. Who will doubtless become 2020’s biggest Republican kingmaker due to the competition deliberately exiting the business.
