My Hard-Hitting Critique of Flags

I love flags. Even if they're kinda useless nowadays. In the days before people could read, they had very practical uses: Flags were the only way to identify yourself as coming from a particular country. People also couldn't talk or hear in those days, so all communication was done through flags. Every nobleman had a flagbearer who would carry about 5,000 different flags, one for each word in the English language at the time. Even the best flag-waver would take about a half hour in between each word to shuffle through his flag collection and find the next flag, so each sentence took about a day. Lots of awkward pauses in those days. If you were a peasant and couldn't afford a flagbearer, you would communicate through punches to the face.

No, not really! Ha ha ha. But flags were a lot more of a practical necessity in those days. And people didn't get all "sacred-relic"-y about their country's flag like they do now. True story: Few people in the United States saw a single American flag for many years after it was adopted, because it really weren't seen as being terribly important. Several years after its adoption, Ben Franklin was quoted as describing the flag wrong, saying it had 13 stripes of red, white and blue instead of red and white. He'd likely seen one or two by then, but just wasn't a big thing at the time. They certainly didn't worry about flag being burnt or touching the ground or being wrapped around penises or whatever people are upset about today. That whole farcically overwrought and overcomplicated flag-folding ceremony was created in the 1970s. Point is, only recently have Americans been all spazzy about the flag.

But anyway, flags are fun. And the American flag is the funnest. It really is the best flag, and I say that not just because I'm a flag-waving, jingoistic, xenophobic white supremacist. It's a unique flag, yet not bizarre. There's lots of good symbolism in there -- the 50 stars for the 50 states, the 13 stripes for the 13 colonies, the white for white people, the red for the blood of white people, the blue for the blood of rich white people. And it's nice-looking too. Here it is:



I bet it's immediately recognizable to just about everyone in the world. In the marketing biz, we call that "good branding." Then we feel icky for using the word "branding," and we reevaluate our choices in life. Then we realize that we have no discernable talent of any kind, so marketing was basically our only option. Then we cry all the way to the bank.

And I really think that should be the number-one qualification for a flag. Attractiveness is important too, but number one in my book is recognizability. If it's easy to remember that a certain flag stands for a certain country, then it's a good flag.

So what would be a counterexample? Basically every flag in Europe. European countries suck at making flags, much as they suck in creating health-care systems, moral values, and people. (Remember, I'm a jingoistic xenophobe.) Pop quiz, hot shot: What country proudly (?) bears this standard atop their mighty whorehouses and "coffeeshops"?



Nope, not France -- France has the same exact colors, except its stripes are vertical instead of horizontal. It's Holland, or, as it's actually called, the Netherlands. What, you didn't recognize it? Maybe because it looks almost exactly like every other fucking flag in Europe?

Here's another pop quiz: what so-called "country" is so perpetually ashamed of itself that it created this flag, apparently in the hope that they would be mistaken for other countries and that no one would notice them ever again?



You guessed it, it's the world's shittiest country, Luxembourg. Luxembourg and the Netherlands even border each other, folks. The Netherlands was so unoriginal that it did the tri-color thing, like every other European country, and used the same colors as France -- and then Luxem-fucking-bourg upped the ante for unoriginality to the stratosphere by using the same flag as its neighbor! They just made one color slightly lighter! That's so unoriginal that it's almost amazingly original!

So both those flags are absolute failures. People who aren't Joe will never come across the Luxembourg flag and be like, "Oh shit, Luxembourg's in the house!" They will instead be all "Is that France's flag? No wait, its stripes are vertical. Eh, it's probably one of those shitty European countries that doesn't even try to pretend that it has enough national pride to make a flag that normal people (i.e., not Joe) can recognize." It's like if the Netherlands had instead called itself Franceland, and then Luxembourg had called itself Francelande.

So where are the good flags? Not Africa, I'll tell you that. As if it wasn't bad enough that they have so many black people there (reminder: I am a racist), their flags are even worse than Europe's. They all use the same freakin' colors, and just arrange them slightly differently. For instance, here's Ghana:



I know, it's like, SO Ghana, isn't it? You think Ghana, and you think about a star, with red, yellow and green stripes. You would never look at that and be all, oh, hey, Guinea-Bissau! However, if you saw this flag ...



... you'd be all, "oh, snap, it's Guinea-Bissau!" A star with red, yellow and green stripes! And it's so symbolic the way one of the stipes is vertical. People in Guinea-Bissau are known for walking while vertical. It's kind of the thing down there.

And you know, my farcical "Franceland" thing is actually the reality here, because look at Guinea's flag:

Sigh. So you have countries called "Guinea" and "Guinea-Bissau." Already, you're starting with a big similarity problem right there. Then these countries each choose almost the same flag. It's like identical twins who dress the same. Don't you guys want to even try to carve out your own identities? If not, then hell, we're wasting time and money keeping you guys as separate countries. We need to conserve ambassadors and embassy buildings -- did you not you see the Al Gore movie? You're wasting valuable paper and chairs at U.N. meetings by insisting on being different countries.

You know, maybe I actually hate flags. Flags seem to willfully contradict my main qualifications: that they be memorable, unique, and blatantly symbolic. I know that the colors in the African flags are symbolic of Pan-Africanism, but couldn't you think of better symbols than just colors? Colors are very busy things: They are on everything in the world, and each color can symbolize life, death, nature, freedom, ham, and every other possible thing imaginable depending on who you are and where you're from. Can't you go with more concrete and obvious symbols? Can't you be more like Swaziland?

Now there's a fuckin' flag! It's got that kick-ass shield and those spears in the middle, plus a bunch of leaves or pinecones or Tribbles or whatever those things are. Swaziland has no self-esteem problems: With this flag, they're saying to me, "Hey, we're Swaziland, and if you don't like it, we will stab you!" As opposed to Luxembourg or Guinea, who are all "ooh, colors are pretty."

Plus, I think it has a nice look to it. The above representation is not a great one -- usually they use a nice light blue that goes well with the other colors and makes it look like something that a professional artist may have created. I mean seriously, imagine what awesome country flags professional artists could create. They would be attractive, recognizable, unique -- why instead, did most countries just pick a few colors and smack 'em together, with nary a thought toward aesthetics?

But anyway, the all-time greatest flag is Nepal's. They really knew how to "think outside the box" ... literally! (By the way, I am available to speak at your next corporate event. My presentation, "Marketing Lessons from Flag Design: Think Outside the Same Goddamn Boxes of Color That Everyone Else Uses," has inspired countless people to improve their ROI efficiency and upflow their innovationability. Contact me today!)

Yeah, buddy! The people at Nepal said "Hey guys, why don't we innovate? Why don't we break the paradigm and promote a brand identity of young, hip, different, EXTREME?!" So that's what they did, and they have since become the market leader in Nepalese products.

And it's symbolic, too. The sun represents the fact that they have sunlight there. The sun on top of the crescent symbolizes the fact that their Muslims think the sun rises and sets just for them. And the whole shape of the flag symbolizes the extremely pointy breasts that all Nepalese women have.

But I should emphasize that to have a passable flag, you don't have to go as far as Nepal did. You can just put some object in the middle. Mexico's flag (which you should know well, so I'm not putting it in here) is a fine one, I think. Nothing earth-shattering -- basically just Italy's flag with a bird in the middle -- but it's enough to make it memorable. If the Netherlands had stuck a picture in the middle of its flag of a man smoking a joint while being fellated by a prostitute, I would have no problem with it whatsoever.

(For further flag-looking-at: Other good flags include the Marshall Islands, Kenya, Kosovo, Dominica, Seychelles, Montenegro, and St. Lucia. Bad ones include Mali, Lithuana, Hungary, Poland, Indonesia and Monaco (same exact flag for those two), and all those goddamn Scandinavian countries that I can never keep straight. Sweden I can get every time. The rest I can never remember.)