I attend various meetings around Raleigh and the Research Triangle in North Carolina involving Republican and conservative issues. At one recent event, I bought several dozen American flag lapel pins to hand out to those who were in attendance. Nearly everyone was thankful to receive one, although some people said that they already had one, or didn't need it.
Controversy Out Nothing
In passing out one of the pins to a lady volunteering that night, with the setup and logistics, I learned something I had never heard before. She told me she had been a flight attendant with American Airlines for 26 years.
One day in 2017, she wore a small American flag lapel pin, much like the ones I was handing out to attendees. She said on the first day she wore the lapel pin, she was informed that it was not permissible.
She asked why. She was told that political pins, buttons, banners, and so forth were not permitted. She asked how a lapel pin of an American flag was somehow political. She didn't receive a good answer, only some corporate claptrap and no other information was forthcoming. She took off her pin, as was required, to keep her job.
A Subtle Corporate Protest?
Flash forward to 2024. I hadn't asked her this, but I surmised that this episode occurred after Jan. 20, 2017. That was the date of Donald Trump's inauguration as president of the U.S. Thus, sometime during his first year, the powers that be at American Airlines decided that such pins were not permissible -- out of bounds, to be taken off.
What could have been so objectionable about wearing your country's flag on an airline named after your own country? It's not Dutch Airlines, it's not Argentinian Airlines, it's American Airlines. What’s more, their logo color scheme is much like the American flag. So, fashion-wise, wearing a tiny lapel pin no bigger than 3/4 quarters of an inch by 3/4 three quarters of an inch wouldn't be offensive to anyone! Or would it?
Were American Airlines executives railing against Trump's 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”? Were Leftists among AA’s top brass? Or had the company been pressured by various Left-wing advocacy groups to disassociate with anything that even remotely smacked of being in league with Trump and the Republicans? Who can say?
A Policy Forged in Hell
I went online to see if I could find something related to American Airlines’ dress code for employees, but couldn't find anything specific. Perhaps I should have asked the woman that night, but that time had passed, and I didn't even catch her name.
This much I know. Something is terribly wrong in a country where one cannot wear a lapel pin of one’s own national flag. For this, such a lapel pin to be deemed “political” is beyond the pale.
When did patriotism fall out of favor? Why does displaying the flag on a lapel pin, or your front porch, or any place raise the hackles of anyone else?
They Come to America
You might have heard that people are streaming to our southern border by the hundreds of thousands every month as a result of Joe Biden's lax border policies. While it's not a pleasant situation for those who believe in the sanctity of American citizenship and of our national sovereignty, the hordes indicate that we are the target country for beleaguered peoples and opportunists around the world.
They come to America for a reason. Even those who claim they have been persecuted in their own countries or are living under duress will march through two or three other countries to reach ours, whereas our immigration laws state that such migrants must stop at the first safe-haven country.
Hereafter, on every American Airlines flight I board, I'll be wearing my American flag lapel pin. I'll also do so on Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Jet Blue, Southwest Airlines, and any other domestic carrier with whom I travel.
If anyone at the check-in counter, at the gate, or onboard tells me that my pin is controversial, they're going to experience a real controversy.