Waving The White Flag

For over half a century now, my hometown of Evansville, Indiana has been flying the same boring, lackluster city flag. 

Spectacular, isn't it? I love the wonderfully banal non-design, as if back in 1950 someone took the letterhead from City Hall stationery and plopped it on a vast, empty field of blue. It may not be exciting, but it sure is dull!

In an effort to spice up our city's woefully uninspired banner, the Evansville Flag Project was born. Organizers of the project put out the call for new design submissions back in 2016, then sat back and watched the entries pour in. Wait, what? 2016? Did they really start this whole thing SIX freakin' years ago? What the hell?

The project ended up receiving over 200 submissions. Most were from Evansville, of course, but others came from as far away as Australia. Wait, what AGAIN? Why the holy hell would they open the contest to the entire world? Shouldn't this be a local, grass roots effort? What the hell would someone from Down Under know about Evansville? Our flavor, our vibe, our... zeitgeist?

Anyhoo, after a ridiculous six years, the Project narrowed the entries down to four finalists. They unveiled them this month, and invited the citizenry to vote on them. 

Hoo, boy!

Note that I don't have any real problem with any of these designes, but the second I saw them I KNEW there was gonna be trouble. Especially in a backward, er, I mean highly conservative city like this, full of rednecks, er, I mean people with traditional values.

The upper left and lower right options were fine, and either would have made decent replacements for what we currently have. The other two, not so much. As soon as I saw their crescent & star designs, I predicted the public would object.

And sure enough, they did. Almost instantly, the populace took to the internet to protest the two "Muslim" flag designs being forced onto the city, illustrating their displeasure with this image. 

Here's just a sampling of the angry and bitter comments (all of which are 100% true and not augmented by me in any way):

Bruce R

All are alike and very unsatisfactory, too Mid-Eastern, too un-American. I am insulted by the designs. GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD!!!

Nicholas H
Man this is what I woke up to this morning seeing these posts. Evansville leadership can't be serious about using any of these flags. You people should have had a larger set of options and probably even let the school kids in on the design process. Through a elimination process regardless who was involved had there been more choices to dwindle it all down to a few for the final round of votes would have surely given Evansville better options for a flag than a bunch of stuff that screams middle east. You do know we love in the opposite side of the world. I don't knock any group of people for their beliefs etc but making our flag resemble something that looks like it should be over seas is disrespectful to our own amalgamation of cultural difference here that makes our own culture. Whoever designed these should be fired and whoever pushed them forward should likewise be fired from whatever office or job they hold.

Eric G
This looks like any other middle eastern flag, I think it was poorly designed and forgettable.

David E
If any of these become our beautiful city's flag we may as well just accept the communist in the WH as our God and bow down to his completely brainless ideas which this idiotic flag TRUMPS in every way. It is ridiculous and should be burned ASAP. Wake up fools, this is a ton of crap and a smear on our city!

Cindy V
The current options are terrible though. No imagination, no creativity, and they look like a mash up of other foreign flags.

Sigh... like I said, completely predictable responses to those designs. Sucks to be right all the time.

After a couple weeks of similar outrage and vitriol, the organizers of the Evansville Flag Project threw up their hands in defeat and disbanded, calling the whole thing off.

As a result, it appears that for the time being we're back to using the bland and boring blue flag we've had since the 1950s. Typical.

You know, it's really too bad that Parks & Recreation ended its run back in 2015. I've often said that I'm convinced the producers of the show based the fictional town of Pawnee on Evansville. This real life incident would have made a PERFECT storyline for the show.

I could just see Leslie Knope deciding the city's flag needed an update, and organizing a contest to pick a new design.

We'd then get one of the show's patented Town Hall Meeting scenes, as the citizens of Pawnee voiced their anger and outrage at all the "Muslim-looking flags," and demanded they be given more traditional, American options.

A disappointed and defeated Leslie would then reinstate the old flag, and ask her boss Ron Swanson where she went wrong. He'd offer up a platitude about how people don't like change, and offer her a shot of Lagavulin whiskey. End scene.