Flags You Can’t Fly In DC
Ever wonder why Sam Alito flew an “Appeal To Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house? The common wisdom is that he flew it because he was simpatico with the cause of the January 6 rioters, just like the inverted American flag he flew outside his home in Alexandria, Virginia, where DC gentry go to bed at night.
But look under Alito’s Pine Tree Flag. What the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks are those two other flags?
I have answers.
The odd one with the stylized sun in a navy triangle is the world famous LBI Flag.
Oh. You’ve never heard of the LBI Flag? LBI stands for Long Beach Island. That’s a barrier island just north of Atlantic City, where Justice Alito maintains a vacation home.
It’s a long, thin island, so it therefore has a long beach. Get it?
Not to be confused with the three artificial islands offshore of Long Beach, California. Those islands were built by a consortium of 5 oil companies (3 now) and were named after the 3 Apollo 1 astronauts who died in a fire in the command module.
Right name, wrong coast.
That flag cannot be flown in Alexandria because it’s not an island, nor on the coast.The other flag, a pennant really, has a big “2022” on it and a logo in the upper right corner that reveals its origin. It’s the NLCS championship flag from the Philadelphia Phillies.
So what do we make of that? How do they all relate? One possibility is that they don’t relate at all: they are as what one would find at the bottom of Mrs. Alito’s purse: an unmatched earring, a restaurant mint, and used Kleenex tissues.
Another possibility is that they all represent things you can’t fly over your home in Alexandria. The Phillies flag is a no-no in a town where the Nats play across the river. The LBI flag is so strange that non-islanders will wonder if it might be Satanic. And we all know why the Pine Tree Flag wouldn’t fly, so-to-speak, in liberal Alexandria, it being the latter-day symbol of January 6 insurrectionism.
Or it could be totally innocent. LBI flag aside, the Phillies pennant combined with the Pine Tree Flag may be a public prayer that that the Phillies be triumphant against their World Series rivals, the Houston Astros.
Appeal denied.