Re: Neil Steinberg - Follow-Up Article 'Collateral Damage'

Date: February 22, 2004

Mr. Steinberg's 11 FEB 04 follow-up piece to "When Can We Get Rid of Those Black Flags", is well worth reading... and appreciated. Perhaps those who were quick to write him expressing their outrage, will be as quick to write him to say thanks for the follow-up.

Neil Steinberg
nsteinberg@suntimes.com

"Button puts small business in bad company
February 11, 2004

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Opening shot

"F--- Bush'' read the little button in a box of naughty buttons -- $1.25 apiece! -- by the cash register. Only it didn't use dashes, but the full "uck.'' And I wasn't in some hip shop on Wells Street, where you might expect such a thing. I was among the ring binders, paper clips and pencil sharpeners in a stationery store on Lake Street, waiting to pay for a black felt tip pen and printer head of magenta ink.

My first thought was to set down my items and leave. There are other office supply stores. But then how would they know? I thought of telling the clerk that I was offended by the button and was never coming back. But I deal with so many offended persons. I didn't want to be an offended person, not so early in the morning.

The guy behind the counter began to ring up my items. He was older, with gray in his hair and a cardigan -- maybe the store owner. I began to pay. The country has so many enemies, so many people who hate it, I didn't want to let this little stationery store slip over to the other side. There must be a way, I thought, to convey what I feel -- that whatever you think of George Bush, he is the president, and a certain respect is in order.

I picked the button out of the box and angled it so the guy behind the counter could read it.

"Do you lose many customers because of this?'' I asked, as if motivated only by idle curiosity. He looked at the button as if he had never seen it before.

"There are lots of buttons in there,'' he said. "If Gore had won, it would say that about Gore.''

"I suppose,'' I said. "Maybe I'm getting old. I bet the kids love 'em. But it seems kinda over the top.'' And I took the plastic bag holding my black felt tip and my magenta ink cartridge and left. But before I reached the door, I heard an unmistakable and welcome sound -- that of piles of buttons being heaped over something, as if to hide it.

Collateral damage

It has been a disturbing week, for me. In fact, in my 20 years of newspapering in Chicago, I can't recall anything more disturbing. Last week, I wrote about the black POW/MIA flag. I thought -- as with the Bush button -- I was directing my fire at a slur against the government. But whatever I thought I was shooting at, I ended up hitting a lot of proud soldiers and grieving relatives, and I'm sorry for that.

I got 500, maybe 1,000 e-mails -- I lost count. Many took my opinion -- those flags seem to say something negative -- and twisted it into the most extreme, treacherous, anti-vet attitude they could imagine, a blanket damnation of history, heroism and the country itself. Their replies couldn't have been stronger had I suggested we dig up Arlington Cemetery and build a theme park. Full-bore outrage mixed with the harshest personal attack. Lots of name-calling. Lots of out-of-the-blue anti-Semitism. More death threats than the typical column generates.

Which puzzled me. Because, if I came across someone who I thought was completely wrong about something, and I wanted them to understand why they are wrong, I don't think I would begin my argument by telling them what a loathsome moron they are and how I'm going to kill them.

But that is a logical argument, and as I read through the responses -- and I must have read hundreds -- I quickly understood that this is not an area of cool logic, but of hot passion, of raw, hard emotion, built up through loss and suffering and acts of heroism met by a shrugging public, a shrugging public that I had volunteered to become the poster boy for. My opinion was a stick I had shoved into an open wound.

That's what bothered me most of all. It wasn't being called names -- I get called names every day. I am a Jew, so the intended insult doesn't sting. It was who was doing the calling and why they were flinging those terms. Being accused by vets of being anti-vet hurt because I'm not ignorant of history -- though I did not realize that the black flag isn't a relic, but means something vital to all sorts of people today, people who don't think that the government is a spider's nest of treachery.

I'm not the guy those vets were attacking. I'm the guy who trots his kids onto the front porch on Veterans Day and has them say the pledge with their hands over their hearts and then tells them about how the Rangers went up those cliffs at Normandy into the teeth of the Nazi machine guns, and that's why we get to loaf around all day.

For those who managed to write civilly, despite their feelings, thank you, it was an education. And for those who heard a twig snap and began firing into the darkness of cyberspace, you may not know it and certainly won't accept it, but you hit a friend. "