Prometheus 6   

Had Enough of the Flag Yet?

As we conclude this Fourth of July weekend, let us not forget the happy denouement to the saga of Ms. Maines, whose crime against America was to tell a London audience in March that she was "ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." What followed were boycotts, death threats and a ritualistic network TV flogging in which, as Jim Lewis put it in Slate, Diane Sawyer demanded that the Chicks "affirm their patriotism and their support for the troops" in the "tradition of a Stalinist show trial."

No matter. The Dixie Chicks have been able to exercise free speech happily all the way to the bank. They've posed nude for the cover of Entertainment Weekly with "Saddam's Angels" emblazoned on their flesh. Their album "Home" rebounded from its brief dip, returning to No. 1 on the country chart for weeks. Their tour has sold out from its first stop, that left-wing stronghold Greenville, S.C. The Dixie Chicks may be bigger than ever.

From national infamy to renewed superstardom in a matter of weeks: that's the kind of story that restores your faith in an America where everything is possible. And most Americans, the Dixie Chicks no doubt included, not only have that faith in their country but love it as well. Yet you'd never know it from the more embittered cultural battles that have raged since 9/11.

"Read 'Treason' this Fourth of July, and let the fireworks begin" commands the full-page ad hawking the latest book by Ann Coulter. In it the author claims that every liberal in the country � or at least every liberal Democrat � "hates America" and is guilty of her titular crime, which, last time I looked, is punishable by death. (The Dixie Chicks escaped her noose by turning traitor only after her book went to press.) According to her book jacket bio, Ms. Coulter's expertise in delivering such sweeping condemnations derives from having been "named one of the top 100 public intellectuals by federal judge Richard Posner in 2001." What she doesn't add � and this is typical of her own intellectual methodology in "Treason" � is that the list was compiled not on the basis of smarts but on the number of times names turned up in the media during the Clinton-hating heyday of 1995 to 2000. Mr. Posner's book was titled "Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline" (my italics), and by its ranking system, Ms. Coulter turns out to be far less of an intellectual than such conspicuous traitors as Sidney Blumenthal, Susan Sontag and Gore Vidal.

At least she doesn't slap the flag on the front of her book to wrap herself in it. (She chose instead an idealized photo of something she loves more than Old Glory: herself. [p6: BWAAAHAHAhahahah!]) The same cannot be said of Dick Morris and Sean Hannity, who use the Stars and Stripes as a merchandising tool for their own self-aggrandizingly patriotic screeds cashing in on their TV celebrity. In this, they follow the lead of their employer, the Fox News Channel, which, like its less successful cable rivals, has exploited the flag as a logo to sell itself as more patriotic than thou.