Yeah yeah yeah.
Was drawn to this because of a post I made, actually, on one of my boards. Here's a clip:
I've ripped into the ribbon issue with a few others during conversation, and I'll do it now too.
There is nothing wrong with supporting your country, or even supporting the war if you feel that it's something we should be doing. But the ribbon thing annoys me on plenty of levels.
- Every ribbon that is sold is being sold for profit - not to support anything except the seller's profit margin. 99% of the ribbon magnets I've seen are being sold in drug stores or gas stations (IRONY!) or delis or any other store where it seems a group of people might come together.
- The yellow ribbon itself has completely lost its meaning over time. Tradition goes back pretty far with it, but it gained attention in more current times back in the Iran Hostage crisis, with the ribbons signifying the desire to have a safe return of the hostages taken in Iran. Along the way, this morphed into "safe return of the troops" during the Gulf War, which was fine, to "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS", which is on almost every yellow ribbon magnet I've seen.
You don't have to "support the troops" to wish to see them home safely. There are plenty of other ways to support them. Personally, I don't support their actions, but I'd love to see them home safe. The yellow ribbon would be approprite for me, if its meaning hadn't changed so much over the last few years.
- Living on Long Island, I saw the Twin Towers thing, the American Flag thing, and now we're in the yellow ribbon thing. They'll all die, eventually. There's still a few people with the towers on their cars - generally the same people who actually were affected by the incident, having lost friends or relatives in the attacks. To them, it still means something. To everyone else, it was the thing to do - to one up the neighbor and have them be envious of you - and to "remain supportive of the country". The flags would stay on cars and rip and fade, but people still kept them on, in direct violation to pretty much every rule you learn about the American flag in Cub Scouts. Eventually they'd get thrown out and not replaced because they weren't convienent to have, and "no one really has them anymore".
Again, I have no problem with supporting something and making it visible (I wear a "trendy" cancer rubber band on my arm as I type), but when the bandwagon grows for it, it makes the message all that less effective by dilluting those who actually support the cause and those who want follow the trend.
Want to be supportive? Take the $5 you're spending on that magnet or sticker or whatever and use it on postage for a care package for a soldier in Kuwait or Iraq. Write a letter. Make a donation to your local volunteer fire department.
Enough of the stupid-a** magnets already.
Yep. I hatehatehatehatehate the ribbon magnets. And they're ALL over the place around here. I don't hate it because of the message. I hate it because it's a trend, and like every other trend, it'll die and no one will remember why we did it.
Kind of like the War in Iraq itself.
Linkage below to an interesting site touching on the history of the yellow ribbon thing, and why putting "Support Our Troops" on them isn't accurate.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/ribbons/
