In defense of "bad" flags
Or: How to stay serif in a sans-serif world
Utah’s new flag will sell more hoodies, but some Utahns aren’t ready to let go of their outgoing flag.
Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill into law last week scheduling the new flag to go into effect in March 2024, but it came with some last-minute concessions. Cox, a Republican, announced an executive order preserving what will be known as the “historic state flag” in some situations, and he asked the state legislature for an amendment to require the historic flag to fly above the new flag when they’re flown together. It was a move that seemed designed to assuage residents unsatisfied with the switch — a group seeking to protect the historic flag has filed paperwork for a referendum over it — and instructive of what other states could see if they try to update their flags next.
Utah’s new flag is more marketable and better suited as a symbol to build community and state identity for a young, Western state than its old flag. The historic flag was designed in the post-Civil War tradition showing the state’s seal, referred to as seal-on-bedsheet, or S.O.B., and opponents see getting rid of it as erasing history. On its website, the group Save Utah’s Flag argues the new flag is “an attempt to revise Utah's history by removing important symbols on our state flag which commemorate our founding.”
“As conservatives we've learned that we lose the culture war by opening up a can of worms that will only lead to more and more change to appease the most recent woke fad.”
Opponents of the new flag cry “Woke!” and some showed up at the Utah Capitol in protest wearing clothes with the Utah seal. Rather than using the language of culture wars, though, fans of S.O.B. flags would be better served by looking to luxury. It isn’t through hastily purchased apparel on Amazon that one preserves a flag, but through the lessons learned on the runway of Burberry’s Fall 2023 show. This is how to stay serif in a sans-serif world:
