When Do We Take the Flags Down?

On my first day off after Sept. 11, three weeks later, I escaped to the Berkshires to see the changing leaves, only to surprise myself by finding solace in another sight--all the flags. It was hardly unexpected to see them at a time like this, in front of most every farmhouse and general store along the two-lane roads of Norman Rockwell country. What was unexpected was my reaction. A child of the ‘60s bred to be wary of flag-waving and the love-it-or-leave-it mentality, I was comforted by these flags. I saw them as expressions of solidarity with what New York was going through, as evidence that the folks up there really cared about what had happened in the city where people tended to be wary, if not scornful, of flag-wavers.

The day I got home, I spoke by phone with my sister, and she too had a flag story--about the pressure she felt to display one at the campus where she teaches. It’s part of the University of Massachusetts system, where another professor had the bad timing to state at a town meeting, on Sept. 10, that the American flag “symbolizes terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression.”

“Now if you don’t put one on your desk . . . , “ said my sister, an unrepentant ‘60s-ite who still equates short hair with militarism and sexual repression. “If you don’t want to, don’t,” I said. “But . . . . “

“Yes, but . . . ,” she said, and we were poised to go at it, as we’re given to doing, until . . . well, my usually confrontational sister decided it might be prudent for her to keep her qualms to herself, and let the flags wave awhile. “I’d better keep my mouth shut,” she said, a phrase I’d rarely heard from her.

There was reason, clearly, to embrace the flag. No one was blindly declaring “my country right or wrong.” This was “our country wronged,” in the most vicious way. “This time it’s not us trying to impose our values on them. It’s them trying to impose our values on us,” pronounced another friend who came of age in the Vietnam era and who traditionally has been leery of nationalism and patriotic fervor, aware of how quickly they can get out of hand.

There have been reports of some grumbling amid the new flag-waving, of course: a Wisconsin teacher worried about “mandating patriotism,” or a Florida company concerned about anything that could “mean different things to different people,” or homeowner associations fearful their rules will be eroded by unauthorized outdoor displays. Yet it has felt like a honeymoon, overall, the post-Sept. 11 embrace of the flag, so much so that some observers--apparently unaware of the supposed death of irony--have branded the absence of conflict “un-American.” While few of us would want to glamorize contentiousness for its own sake, they are right that we should exult in our tolerance of it in the political arena--especially when reminded of the ugliness of extreme intolerance, exemplified by a pious enemy who tears down the statues of another faith and promises eternity in heaven to those who massacre civilian “infidels.”

We’ve already seen that we don’t have to cling to an idealized vision of perfect unity. We did not have to pretend we didn’t hear when thousands of firefighters booed their own chief at Paul McCartney’s Madison Square Garden fund-raiser urging the world to “let it be.” We don’t have to pretend we’re shocked when firefighters and police start battling at ground zero over whether the bodies are being respected. We don’t have to act surprised when everyone starts squabbling over the charity money.

We’re a society of issues, and the flags are sure to provoke some as well. But how? It can’t be merely for the commercialization of them, whether by the street peddlers who hawk them outside Bellevue’s “Wall of Prayers” or the fashion designers who put it on their new lines, or the TV shopping network that began touting, in breathless tones, “the ultimate collector’s set.” Those targets are too easy.

A few days after my jaunt to the Berkshires, a group of us from work were having lunch on Park Avenue when a police car raced up, backward, and screeched to a stop on the sidewalk. The officers ran off so hurriedly that they left the doors open, and we assumed they were chasing another suspected terrorist, until they returned and said it was “only” another crazy homeless person with a knife. Then the car sped off, four flexible flags on the roof bending in the breeze. That’s when one of my work mates told us why her condo building did not have a flag in front.

The meeting of the condo board had become nasty--no news in that--as one staunch holdout fought the motion to erect a flag. He didn’t object to a display of patriotism, or of support for the victims. He was worried about the flag’s becoming a source of tension in the future--when they had to decide when to take it down.

As more weeks passed, and more flags went up, I began to suspect that the condo fellow had found the issue.

How will we decide when to take them down?

I posed that question to the people who, on Oct. 13, put up the largest flag in New York. You can’t miss it along Fifth Avenue: it covers virtually the entire front of the glass-walled five-story office building at the corner of 43rd Street, two blocks from Grand Central Station. About the only thing the flag doesn’t cover is the Chase Manhattan bank branch at ground level.

Women’s clothing designer Elie Tahari, who owns the building and put up the flag, said it is 150 feet wide, 52 feet high and made of cloth mesh, so workers can still see outside. A 49-year-old native of Israel, Tahari came to the United States in 1973, when disco was big and flags not. “When I came here to New York, the hippies were here and let it hang loose, and we were fighting a war and Congress was talking about whether we have a right to burn the flag or not burn the flag, or to arrest them.” Though he had come here “for freedom”--and to make his fortune--”I never paid attention to this.” Three decades later, “the flag has different meaning,” he says. “We’ve been attacked.”

One of his showrooms faced the twin towers. A Tahari store in the World Financial Center was destroyed. His workers were depressed. After dealing with the immediate crises, Tahari took his wife and new baby to Connecticut, where his in-laws run a Country Inn. It had “100 flags” flying already, and when Tahari returned to the city, he told his staff about them. “Somebody said instead of a lot of little flags, why don’t we just cover the building,” he recalled.

I asked Tahari if anyone opposed his plan. They had. “There were some people working in the building, they were bringing a petition. They were afraid it would be a target. I said, ‘You know guys, maybe we should run away and hide in a cave.’ ”

He also got a mixed response when he asked his two commercial tenants to share the $20,000 cost. The Japanese-owned Ricoh Corp. agreed to kick in $10,000 to become “the only building wrapped in the flag,” as vice president Jim Ivy put it, “to show our spirit and our pride in America and our willingness to act as a symbol. It took us about three minutes to make the decision.”

But the American-owned bank? “Chase said, ‘No,’ ” Tahari reports. A spokeswoman for the bank noted that the money was “not going to relief,” and that Chase preferred giving--$10 million--to help the victims. “We have flags on all of the buildings we own. We have four flags displayed in the headquarters building, four large flags,” the spokeswoman added. “It just wasn’t something we could support.”

It was refreshing, indeed, to hear the issues come out.

Tahari wasn’t fazed. Even the workers who worried the building might become a target shook his hand after the flag went up, he says. He also launched a campaign to put tags in clothes, “Proudly Made in New York,” giving a speech about how he “came to this country, and Lady Liberty with her hand lifted up was lighting up the harbor, ‘Welcome to America!’ ”

I wondered if Tahari, or his co-sponsor of the flag, had pondered when it might come down. They hadn’t, but they had ideas. Different ones.

“I’d like it to stay up through the end of the year . . . through the holidays,” says Ricoh’s Ivy, envisioning the visitors who flock to see the decorated Fifth Avenue shops coming a few block south to see the flag. “The only downside,” he says, “is that, if you’re inside, you’ve got tons of people outside looking at you.”

Tahari might not be ready to take it down after the holidays. His timetable: “When it’s over.”

“I hope I will take it down very, very soon,” he says. “I hope this whole thing is over very soon.”

That will be an issue on the political front, of course: How will we know this is over? What will constitute victory?

As for the flag, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission may help determine when it will come down. A few years ago, Tahari’s building was designated a landmark for its “Fifties Industrial” architecture. It’s not supposed to be altered in any way.

“I didn’t hear from them yet, but as long as we’re in a war, the flag’s staying up,” he says, then offers the unquestionably American approach to handling such a matter. “If Landmark comes to me and forces me to take it down, they will have to take me to court.”