{"id":73,"date":"2004-12-09T14:38:57","date_gmt":"2004-12-09T20:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stardel.com\/eg\/?p=73"},"modified":"2004-12-09T14:38:57","modified_gmt":"2004-12-09T20:38:57","slug":"long-may-it-wave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2004\/12\/long-may-it-wave\/","title":{"rendered":"Long May It Wave"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbc.com\/The_West_Wing\/index.html\">West Wing<\/a>&#8221; opened with a nice bit by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennandteller.com\/\">Penn and Teller<\/a> last night. As part of a magic trick they were performing at the White House, they folded up an American Flag (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usflag.org\/fold.flag.html\">correctly<\/a>), wrapped it up in the <a href=\"http:\/\/usinfo.state.gov\/usa\/infousa\/facts\/funddocs\/billeng.htm\">Bill of Rights<\/a>, went &#8216;poof&#8217;- &#8216;flash&#8217;,  and the flag disappeared in a puff of smoke,  leaving the Bill of Rights unscorched. And one of the on-going sub-plots for the rest of the show was getting the &#8220;White House&#8221; to condemn the &#8216;burning of the Flag&#8217; in the  White House, at a private birthday party.<\/p>\n<p>It might have been more political to have had them fold up the Bill of Rights into the Flag, and then, &#8216;poof&#8217;-&#8216;flash&#8217;, the Bill of Rights disappears, and the flag is left unsullied. But that might be getting too obscure and would have ruined the following sub-plot. Hard to imagine the press corps getting worked up about the alleged destruction of the Bill of Rights in the White House.<\/p>\n<p>I thought the writers missed a good, cheap shot when the Josh Lyman character is trying to jump on Penn (he&#8217;s a pretty big dude) to announce that they did not burn the flag and to explain how the trick was done and Penn denies him with a stirring speech on just what the Bill of Rights is all about. Josh then asks if Penn went to law school and Penn replies, &#8220;No, clown school.&#8221; And, what Josh didn&#8217;t say was, &#8220;Pretty much the same thing&#8221; or something like that. A missed opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought &#8220;West Wing&#8221; opened with a nice bit by Penn and Teller last night. As part of a magic trick they were performing at the White House, they folded up an American Flag (correctly), wrapped it up in the Bill of Rights, went &#8216;poof&#8217;- &#8216;flash&#8217;, and the flag disappeared in a puff of smoke, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2004\/12\/long-may-it-wave\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Long May It Wave<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4NpF-1b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}