Showing Off the Wrong Way

I'm sure we are all ignorant of something. Or many things. But when you reveal and cement your ignorance and it reaches Twitter, you might need to go into hiding.

Take the WikiPedia entry for Rebecca Morris, "a New York Times bestselling true-crime author and a TV, radio and print journalist who lives in Seattle, Washington," who wrote to her Seattle Times about the flag flying in her neighborhood, beneath the Stars and Stripes.  She gave enough information that made finding the neighbor's flag easy enough, and therefore photographing the offending flagpole even easier.

The photograph, for all the world to see now, is that the flag flapping under Old Glory was not the Confederate flag that Ms. Morris thought, but rather it turned out to be the Norwegian flag that Ms. Morris thought was flapping under Old Glory, being flown by a Norwegian-American whose father had been a tugboat captain.

Mr. Stangeland was flying the Norwegian flag (thoroughly mindful that if you're going to fly a flag along with the Stars and Stripes it has to go under the Stars and Stripes) to show his pride in Norway's huge success at this year's Winter Olympics games.

When told of her mistake, Ms. Morris explained that she looked it up on the Internet, and was convinced the Stars and Bars was flying. It seems red and blue can be so confusing.

I know nothing about Ms. Morris other than what I read on the Internet. She grew up in Oregon, which means she didn't grow up near the U.N. on First Avenue in New York City, or was taken there on a school trip. She also probably didn't collect stamps, and likely attended a school system that left geography out of its syllabus (not hard to do) and hasn't watched any Winter Olympic games in any quadrennial period. Norway has even medaled in curling, so even that's been on.

Whether late-night comedians inflict further embarrassment on Ms. Morris will probably depend on someone hiding Donald Trump's phone. Someone has already claimed on Twitter that Ms. Morris has withdrawn her petition to have a neighbor's garden statuary removed after it was pointed out it was a garden gnome and not a statue of a Confederate general.

Poor Ms. Morris.

http://www.onoffrmap.blogspot.com