CDC: Too Many Flags Can Be Fatal
By Erin Brody
AP correspondent
5/15/2003
A troubling milestone has just been passed: according to a recent CDC study, US deaths due to excessive flag use during the wave of patriotism since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have now surpassed the death toll on that tragic day.
Most of these thousands of flag-related deaths fall into the following five categories:
· Auto accidents due to lack of visibility in flag-draped vehicles (973
fatalities);
· Fires caused by flags hung too near flame sources (621);
· Joggers and bikers strangled by flags (582);
· Babies suffocated by flags (317);
· And pedestrians impaled by flagpoles. (275)
Not included in these statistics are the numerous flag-assisted murders, such as the regrettable if understandable flag-throttling of antiwar protesters by patriots, and the stuffing of flags down their throats; or the many suicides, such as the accidental self-immolations of flag-burners.
Also not included is the sad case of the seventeen Chinese child laborers crushed by a conveyor belt while making American flags last month, although this is apparently what led to the recent notorious outbreak of fatally infected flags known popularly as the "SARS and Stripes" incident.
Says Tulsa "flag-widow" Wendy Stiles, whose husband Randy blew himself up accidentally driving a flag into a gas main while smoking, "It just makes me sick, after what that monster did to us at the Twin Towers, and now killing us with our own flags and all, it just really makes me want to nuke Iraq!" (It was not clear if she was referring to Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, but who can argue with her point?)
The litany of flag-related deaths this past year-and-a-half goes on and on:
· The food-poisoning cases from red-white-and-blue-dyed patriotic sushi
at a Chicago Japanese restaurant;
· The flag-bedecked convertible attacked by bears at Yosemite National
Park;
· The Miami drunk who electrocuted himself urinating on an electric
flag;
· The Manhattan fashion model who slipped on a discarded flag and tragically
fell into traffic to her death;
· The Iowa farmer on a flag-draped tractor charged and gored by a bull;
· The patriotic Oregon hilltop campers struck by lightning conducted
by their flag;
· The twin Akron children dead from blood poisoning from sleeping with
flag sheets;
· The Arizona rancher who struck a rattlesnake while planting a flag.
The CDC is especially concerned with the growing trend of families and children going without food, medicine, and even being evicted due to their mother's or father's addiction to flags. Johns Hopkins sociologist Charles Munson describes this addiction as remarkably similar to gambling and substance abuse, and says there are now twelve-step groups and hotlines to help people deal with the problem. "If you find yourself throwing your bills aside or going hungry in anticipation of your next visit to Flag-Mart or Flagland, if you buy more than five new flags a week, each larger than the last, if you find yourself mentally measuring the size of other people's flags and feeling inadequate about it, I would say a red flag should go up, no pun intended." Sadly, at the moment Dr. Munson uttered these words, his flag lapel pin snapped open and stabbed him in the heart, fatally.
The two most infamous and tragic incidents happened recently during the patriotic fervor attending the war on Iraq. In a support-the-troops event at Times Square in March, a flashing neon flag caused a sound crewman to have an epileptic seizure, falling onto a toggle switch which caused a power outage, making the crowds suspect a terrorist attack and rush panicking toward the exits, trampling several hundred to death.
Less than a month after that tragedy was the most horrific incident yet. Southern California's Camp Pendleton had prepared a huge victory parade for the marines returning from Iraq, but as the airplane taxied down the runway, several of the hundreds of flags were sucked into one of the jets, causing the plane to overturn and explode, setting off several ammunition dumps containing rockets, one of which hit the San Onofre nuclear plant, starting a meltdown that reached all the way to Disneyland, melting the Matterhorn and causing untold thousands of deaths by radiation while disrupting the San Andreas Fault creating an earthquake which registered 7.1 on the Richter scale, aftershocks of which are still being felt as I write, causing deaths in the millions and property destruction so far in the billions of dollars, not counting the anticipated effect of this tidal wave I can see coming from here, and all because of TOO MANY FLAGS!!!