Anti-semitism, or stone-stupidity? I report, you decide:
DALLAS, Sept. 30 ? A Texas high school has apologized after the school band waved a Nazi flag during a performance on Friday, the start of the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashana. ?We had an error in judgment,? band director Charles Grissom told the Dallas Morning News.
During a half-time show, a student from Paris High School went running across the field waving a Nazi flag.
At the time, the Blue Blazes band was playing the composition by Franz Joseph Haydn that eventually became known as ?Deutschland Uber Alles.?
Grissom said it was part of a show entitled ?Visions of World War Two,? in which the flags and music were intended to represent the warring nations.
Well, at least they apologized for their “error in judgement.” I don’t think I’m being over-sensitive here; lots of people get mad at the notion of the Confederate flag being waved, and they have a point. Flying the Nazi flag on Rosh Hashana sounds too much like deliberate malice than innocent error to me, and I shave with Occam’s Razor every morning. On the other hand, some people are truly clueless.
Yes, yes, I know we don’t want to ignore what the Germans did by acting as if Nazism didn’t exist. Somehow, though, I think there might have been a different way to celebrate the history of WWII that was a tad less insensitive. Imagine celebrating the 60′s by hosing down all the black students with fire hoses while banjo music tweedles in the background.
(Thanks to Michele at A Small Victory for the pointer)
I had just read this on the Drudge Report before viewing it here. Here is the link to the original story that appeared in Newsday:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-band-nazi-flag,0,5422665.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
No one is this ignorant in this day and age of what kind of emotion the Nazi symbol brings out in people. The real tragedy was the fact that no one actually stood up to the band director before the marching band took to the field. Are they telling us that no one else knew of this performance? If my kid was practicing “Deutschland Uber Alles” in his room on the trombone, I would have demanded to know what the hell was going on. The next day I would be standing in the band director’s office with the superintendent and the principal in tow asking if the director had lost his mind. Having played in a band, I know that there had to have been at least another dozen adults that watched the practice. Someone’s mother had to have sewn that Nazi flag that the kid was waving around. I can’t believe no one thought, “Gee, maybe parading a Nazi flag around on Rosh Hashana is not a good idea.”
The laughable thing about the performance was that it was going to be a competition piece. They were actually going to go to a band competition to win by playing that music and waving that flag around.
I could only imagine what must have been going on in the minds of the dozen or so World War II veterans let alone anyone of Jewish decent. The only thing that kept me from completely losing my faith in humanity was that the stadium audience booed and chased the band off the field. This is one of those situations where a community horsewhip should be brought out to beat this man through the streets and out of this town.
I think the Jewish community would benefit from starting a campaign:
Send Jewish Calendars to Hickville, U.S.A Campaign
I think this would be money well spent. We send Jewish Calendars to all the Hick towns (like Indiana, PA and Paris, Texas, etc… Paris, again! Those darn French!) so they KNOW when the Jewish Holidays are because they’ll be RIGHT THERE written in the little calendar boxes.
Here’s my 5 bucks.
the band wasnt chased off the field for your info. they were cursed and had things thrown at them b4 they even got on the field.(who are the bad guys now?) by the way, paris aint no hick town. we’re not like u goin off and runnin yo mouth, and not even knowin the situation, or having been there to be offended. the band director has not even gotten any letters from offended vets. all the vets support it and think without aknowledging it, ppl will forget what actually happened. and on top of that, the blue blazes band of paris texas went to copetition on saturday, and WON.
First, I don’t think that I had to have been there in order to find it offensive; I wasn’t alive for, say, the filming of “Birth of a Nation,” but I still think the movie’s a pretty nasty piece of work.
The fact that the swastika-waving band won doesn’t make the whole thing any less moronic; if you’re not going to admit that waving Nazi flags on the Jewish New Year might be a bit insensitive, I doubt we can engage in any serious kind of discourse.
i would like to see the actual footage of
from texas high school game, where the
team cam out with Naxi flags, while
the Nazi Germany Anthem was playing in
the background. If anyone know’s where
I can find footage of this, I would
like to see it. Please E-mail me or
reply to this post. Thank you
Call me out of the loop, but this is the first time I’ve heard of this “distressful situation”, and frankly, I’m not impressed by the commenting so far. As an avid WWII buff, I know the history of the war and the impact it has put on the world. While I know that in most Americans, the Nazi flag, swastika blazing, causes massive amounts of hatred and “patriotism” (I put patriotism in quotations because anytime some simple-minded twit decides to say something hateful on the behalf of America, they coin themselves as patriots, when all they are are bigots and hypocrites) to rise out of their bowels, and they “MUST BRING DOWN THAT THAR FLAG ‘FORE SOMEONE GETS THERESELVES LYNCHED!” Let’s look for a moment on the history of the symbol of Nazi Germany. Unknown to most of you, the swastika is a native american symbol for good luck, and American soldiers had been wearing them on their uniforms since the symbol had been discovered. This practice stopped when American soldiers saw that it was the symbol of their oppressive enemy in WWII. Ask your grandfathers, they’ll tell you the same.
Also, if I understand correctly, the band had flags of ALL warring nations of WWII in their presentation, so the flag of the Rising Sun was in there as well. Japanese soldiers murdered, raped, mutilated, beheaded, tortured, burned, and ripped apart over 15 million Chinese CIVILIANS during their takeover of Manchuria in 1939. Why none of you “patriotic” citizens brought up the use of the Japanese flag, boggles my mind. Perhaps you aren’t educated in WWII history past the fact that the German’s used the Nazi flag, and maybe the Holocaust, although I’m sure none of you know who Joseph Mengele is…
Case in point, you people just see someone holding the Nazi flag and you can think of nothing more than “how evil and wrong”. Do you think people take down their confederate flags in South Carolina on Kwanzaa? Not a chance. Learn something and stop being so ignorant.
And for the record, I’m also a fan of classical music, and Haydn was a master of his art, and ANY band playing Deutschland Uber Alles the way it was meant to be played, ESPECIALLY a high school band, deserves a first place award. I don’t care if they’re playing naked.