Showing The Flag
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- June
- 17
I was driving down the Bronx River Parkway and was somewhere south of Scarsdale when I saw a car go by with an American flag fluttering off the starboard bow. I took special note because vehicular showing-of-the-flag has been a rare expression of patriotism since the heady post 9-11 days when it seemed every car was decked out in red, white and blue.
But what really surprised me—but only for a split second—was that the guy was driving a Toyota Corolla. How times have changed. “Buy American” used to be the auto industry battle cry. A generation ago, the flag wavers called you unpatriotic if you drove a Japanese car.
Not anymore. Today, Toyota is the world’s largest auto maker, and it has more than 16 percent of the American market share. They have plants all over the U.S.
Sixty-three years after the Marine planted the national banner on Mount Suribachi in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles in American history, we’re now putting the flag on Japanese-made cars and without the slightest sense of irony.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
