Bill Maher is usually a good time, but this is the paragraph that put it over the top into the LOVE:

Of course, the Republicans are the party of Mark Foley and the Rev. Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and countless other closeted homosexuals, so their fixation on jewelry is understandable, but still ... the flag is just a symbol. You're getting pissy about a brooch, you drama queens, one that was probably made in China. It's probably leaking poison lead on you right now.

As someone who feels the same way about lapel pins and yellow-ribbon magnets as Barack Obama, I say, word up, to both him and Maher!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8

This is on the money, bro!

Thanks a thousand times. That's at least the number of times I've wanted to shove one of those pins up someone's ass, pointy end first.

The reason you don't see so many Repugs wearing Flag Pins on their lapels anymore is because they have had them attached to their GOLD PLATED MONEY CLIPS!!!Which they keep tucked away out of sight!!!!!!Tommie27

They'ev made alot of money from that flag! Tommie27

I don't have cable so I forget that there are people out there who can be as blunt as I about this bullshit. What's amazing to me is that Republican PC is even more disgusting than Democratic PC.

>They'd still be obsessing about the blow job.

That's "They still are...".

Fifteen more months to go of this debacle, uh, administration and it just gets more dangerously pathetic all the time. Are we really talking seriously about bombing Iran? This is madness! When will ordinary Americans, who truly love this country, finally wake up and realize how bad a hole we're in - politically, socially, economically, and globally. Sometimes it just seems hopeless and Orwellian.

Keep on ranting, Bill. Lots of us are with you.

These people don't support troops. They proudly support war profiteers. They are the same people who got to church every Sunday and have to tell yu about it. I bet the oh so sanctimonious Hillary wears a flag in her lapel. Remember when she led the seantors in God Bless America on the steps of the capitol when 911 happened? She was positioning herself for a run a the presidency at that moment, politicizing it. The war profiteers love her and are pushing her candidacy. Hey, Bill, Don't go into hiding if they try to demonize you again. We need you.

Outstanding! I loved this piece, and I adore the few people like Maher in this society who have the guts to really speak out and tell it like it is. The jingoistic American flag idolatry that has always been with us but reached its zenith after 9/11 has always made me nauseated. I'm grateful that others who feel the same way are finally saying, "Enough." And that includes Obama--he scored major points in my book for refusing to wear the lapel pin and for unabashedly explaining why when asked. Kudos to both!

Why don't you just stab the Statue of Liberty in the eye while bitch-slapping a 9/11 widow?

Isn't that what Ann Coulter calls "coffee break?"

Republican style "patriotism" is the last refuge of the asshole.

Here are my 2 favorite bits:

And they give cover to people like Sean Hannity, who reported on "no pin" gate and then had to call a doctor because his fake outrage hard-on lasted longer than 72 hours.

Comic bold bordering on genius!

Can you imagine how apoplectic the flag-pin people would be if these same transgressions against the military were being made by Bill Clinton? Oh, who am I kidding? They'd still be obsessing about the blow job.

This one is less funny, but more true. In fact, to my parents (staunch Republicans), destroying the lives of tens of thousands of troops is absolutely fine so long as you've also destroyed the lives of a half a million brown people. But a blow job??? Seriously, they're still angry about that.

This is what made American citizens start doing that very thing - fake patriotism, worse even than the sunshine patriot, the "phony" patriot, a la Limbaugh, who push the flag in your face every time they are faced with a truly difficult question.

Hell, I stopped wearing American flag pins during the late 60s, when I realized what Obama has realized: that it stands for, to paraphrase that great American Mose Allison, "My mind is on vacation and my mouth is working overtime." I was sick of hearing the divisive sons of bitches back then and I've been sick of them ever since. Now that their number has grown and their sincerity level has dropped to less than zero, it's almost as though, well...Mr. Mahar has said it already.

Good job Bill! It's all about a crazy-quilt thing Betsy Ross put together, not about the reason we're even here.

Assholes...yes, they are, almost all of them, assholes. And they wear their symbol proudly while the good and earnest people of this nation gut out the real work of fighting and thinking and evolving. SO much easier to stick something- anything - on one's lapel than to actually think or DO anything.

Thanks for the link! I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

For years I have resented the consistent use of flag lapel pins by men (I never saw a woman wearing one) as some kind of proof that the speaker is a patriot. Somehow, the whole idea that unless the President, Senator, of member of Congress has one, they it's doubtful that he is a patriot is just an idiotic idea. The fact that Obama finally called it what it was and stopped wearing one shows that he is an original thinker -- even if it's about something that should be trivial.

And Bill Maher deserves credit for calling it what it is too.

And especially this: "This generation doesn't do real sacrifice or even pay for our own wars. That's what grandkids are for!"

This war was brought to you by the party of alleged fiscal responsibility, low taxes, and Leaving No Kid Behind and they've guaranteed that millions of American Kids will be left behind as they pay the taxes this generation wasn't willing to pay.