NASCAR flag ban flops

The response of NASCAR fans to CEO Brian France’s call to put away their Confederate flags was pretty much predictable. If anything, there were more Stars and Bars on display at Daytona than in other years.

If anything, it gives you some idea of how out of touch the billionaires who run the big show are with their fan base. It’s not a crowd that goes in for political correctitude, and I’m OK with that.

There is something fundamentally phoney about banning cultural symbols on the basis that seeing them may cause someone to feel sad or angry. So the Confederate flag reminds some people of slavery? So what? America was built on slavery. Why pretend otherwise now? Besides, it seems to me that it’s more white liberals taking umbrage than actual descendants of slaves.

This flag flap arose out of the recent mass murder by a messed up white kid who took a few selfies with that flag. That’s a tragedy that could lead to some good if it lead to discussions about alienated youth, mental illness, prescription drug side-effects, or gun control.

America isn’t willing to have any of those discussions, so instead, the conversation veers down this irrelevant dead-end side-street over a symbol.