White is for Show

I was in a store yesterday for the Labor Day holiday picking up a prescription-a medication I just realized as I'm typing this that I did not take ten years ago. I probably took something in the same family but this one is a new and improved version. I no longer argue with the doctor that a drug can either be new OR improved but it can't be both because neither of us is actually listening. Sort of like America, then and more especially now.

On my way out I spotted white tee-shirts with a large American flag and even larger letters above it reading "Proud to Be an American" and below the flag, 09/11/01-09/11/11, but not a single letter devoted to forming the words Day of Remembrance and National Service which is what I thought we were attempting this Sunday.

The label on the shirts told me they were made in Honduras, so my salute to all those involved in a nifty piece of job exporting, thus making it even easier for folks who no longer have jobs to really enjoy their day off even if it's hard to tell from the one before and the one afterwards.

I found it disturbingly interesting how quickly two 'team members' appeared at my side when I took out my smart phone with its camera to attempt a picture of the shirt and the label. They needn't have worried-I'm an idiot with this thing and probably five to eight years away from figuring out how to work the camera. I'd call one of our children but learning the phone part is even harder than the taking the picture part.

Still, some of us seemed to think if I were kept from having a visual to support my observations of fact, it isn't real and no one will believe me. Yeah, good luck with that. I think what was missing was the shirts on the team members should should have brown as that's always been the color of choice for the fascist fashionista.

It's not really important what we say anymore because in the last decade we have talked a torrent of words more often at, rather than to, one another but what we have done has gotten us more lost as we've surrendered to the dogs of war. I was thinking about the white tee-shirts I could buy to make myself feel better about an horrific moment in our country's history and how someone saw it as an opportunity to line their pocket which probably made them feel a lot better when I suddenly remembered Welles Crowther and his red bandanna.

When I came home, I learned I wasn't the only one who'd been thinking of him-so thanks to Elissa for sharing and taking the nasty off the edge of the afternoon and to a boatload of people at ESPN, who offered this vignette from Outside the Lines. It provided the two sentences we should have long since adopted as our collective mantra since that darkest of days a decade ago, "Everyone who can stand; stand now. If you can help others, do so."

-bill kenny