News :: Opinion
Yet Another Questionable Landmark
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Published: June 4, 2008
I thought it was kind of nifty a couple of years ago when the city put lights on that old water tower just off Interstate 275 coming into town. It became a welcoming beacon when we returned from somewhere after dark.
Now that's apparently going to be upstaged a few miles up the road, near the confluence of Interstates 4 and 75, with the erection of what is being billed as the world's largest Confederate battle flag.
You know, New York has its Statue of Liberty; San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge. From now on that flag will be our landmark. People from all over the world will know exactly where they are when they see that thing from miles around.
Did I say big? According to its owner it will be 50-by-30 feet and attached to a 139-foot flagpole, not including 14 feet buried in the ground. It is going to be the only other manmade thing besides the Great Wall of China visible from outer space.
It will be part of a memorial being put up by one Marion Lambert of Brandon, who owns the property and is apparently one of those determined we do not forget the War of Northern Aggression, as if anyone wants to.
The Winds Of War
Unlike Korea, Vietnam or half a dozen conflicts in which Americans died and are little more than paragraphs in school textbooks, memories of the Civil War and its consequences burn deeply in the American conscience. If you have any doubt of this you have not been following the presidential nominating process.
Now anyone coming our way on the interstates into Hillsborough County will first be confronted with this flag. Do you suppose it might just cause a little controversy? You aren't just whistling "Dixie," good buddy. All you have to do is take a gander at the comments section below the story on TBO.com. I'll leave them to you to look up, but I don't think I'd want that crowd all in the same room.
Since the flag and memorial are going to be on private property, the county first washed its hands of it. Flags are not covered by any particular code, although county commissioner Rose Ferlita said she plans to bring up the flag at today's commission meeting.
Pedro's Of Florida?
Is the flag offensive? It is to me, at least in its size and placement. I mean this is the biggest thing between here and that giant sombrero tower at Pedro's South of the Border in Dillon, S.C. There is, by the way, another massive Confederate battle flag up near the border. Somebody told me the first American flag you see is at the Micanopy exit where that nude club is.
Should the Confederate flag be banned? Nah. America was built on in-your-face bad taste. If we took down everything that was offensive or in bad taste in Florida we'd be left with a swamp.
I would suggest that if Mr. Lambert or the good people of the Sons of Confederate Veterans want to get some tips on how to honor those who served and died, they ought to head up I-75 near Bushnell and drive over to the Florida National Cemetery, a magnificent memorial and resting place for those who served in our military.
What we don't need is another roadside attraction that diminishes instead of elevates the memory of that horrific conflict and those from both sides who did what they believed was right.
Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.
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