Am I the only one who thinks Tom had good intentions?

He may not be a veteran, but did serve his community as a police officer, and I for one am ready to believe that his flag pole and the flag flying from it was an honest attempt to honor our veterans and our country.

Making fun of his writing style and spelling is one thing -- heck, he does it himself -- questioning his sincerity is something else. None of us knows his motives and is in a position to question them.

Many of these posts seem to me to be nothing less than personal attacks on someone who can be controversial.

And, by the way, the term "planting" a flag pole -- or any pole -- is not unusual. I'm also not sure why comparing the American Flag, or any other, to a condom is in particularly good taste, either.

Real question is, why did there have to be a thread about the fact that his flagpole fell over?

You can ask that question about a lot of threads on GC. It's a bulletin board.

DeltAlum, Tom set himself up for it by making the title of the thread a sexual innuendo. Personally, I get annoyed by people who do things like display the flag or put one of those "support our troops" ribbon stickers on their car, without actually doing anything to support the troops. It's like people who wear Livestrong wristbands to say that they support cancer but don't really do anything to help support cancer research other than buying a rubber $1 bracelet.

And why did he have to give it a provocative title like that? He certainly isn't innocent when it comes to dirty remarks... as has been proven by his numerous comments to women around here. Because he chose to give it a title such as he did, he invited it to go that way.

Sorry that you have no sense of humor, DeltAlum. What else are we supposed to say? Take care of your property better? You're lucky no one got hurt? Perhaps he was being disrespectful of the flag in his own right by flying it in inclement weather and not properly caring for the flagpole. If the non-tornado strength wind blew his flagpole down, it was obviously either not installed properly or was in disrepair.

You don't have to agree that something is in good taste- because being in bad taste isn't illegal or against the TOS, nor are you the taste judge. Most everyone else thought it was humorous.

I'm not ready to decide that Tom had sex in mind.

Maybe that's a product of other minds. I've said a few things that, in retrospect, came out sounding wrong myself.

In addition, do you know that Tom does nothing else to support our troops. And, are you saying that displaying the flag is not a show of support?

Not that I feel a real need to justify my comments to you, but hey, I had a couple of seconds of down time...

I was having fun (as well as others) with the wording of the post; it was Tom who took us to task for some perceived slight at our countrymen. Those of us who are children of veterans (or grandchildren of them) responded to that criticism, and I don't personally think those responses were personal attacks.

It's an empty show of support. A soldier fighting in Iraq doesn't care if Tom, or anyone else for that matter except maybe his/her family, is flying a flag on his/her lawn.

You can think whatever you want about whether or not he had sex on his mind. His constantly sexual comments and inneundos to many of the GC women show otherwise. But yeah, that good ole boys membership makes a person blind of that.

How IS displaying the flag a show of support for troops? Whoop-de-doo you have a flag. That's nice and all, but it doesn't really show anything besides the fact that you bought it and gave the money to whatever company who is making a profit off of it. If someone wants to play the support-the-troops card, they should actually do something to support the troops.

My thoughts exactly.

Tom may exhibit sexism. Comments about "good old boys" is agism.

Ask my late father-in-law, a proud World War II, vet who proudly flew a flag every day about whether it is meaningful.

As for justifying comments, I didn't ask anyone to do that. I gave my opinion. You can disagree if you care to.

As for "having fun," be my guest. Our definition of fun differs when it gets to the point of attack.

Thank you very much for your comments. I'm going to work.

Again, your father was a vet. He did something for the country and the troops.

There are 20 year olds on here who I would group into the good ole boys. It has nothing to do with age and everything to do with how you always take whatever viewpoint is contrary to the women and stick up for the other guys. The commonplace term "good ole boys" really has nothing to do with age. And yeah, you got "ageism" from BA, great source there.

I'm still curious as to how flying a flag is supporting the troops.

As I said above,

"He may not be a veteran, but did serve his community as a police officer, and I for one am ready to believe that his flag pole and the flag flying from it was an honest attempt to honor our veterans and our country."

By the way, a lot of the rest of us served as well. The former Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who lives across the street from us flies the American Flag daily. I'll not take him to task for it.

I don't think you should assume that people who are presently serving don't appreciate a show of support by flying The Colors. They do it themselves with the patch of the shoulder of their uniform.

Off to work. Have a good day.

I respect the fact that your late father-in-law was a WWII vet, but I wouldn't need to ask him; I could ask my own father (a proud Vietnam vet), who, for the record, also flies the flag outside my parents' home.

You're entitled to your opinions, just as we're entitled to ours. If you're going to call people to task for behavior, most likely you'll get some responses.

Again, I was not (nor were others here) ridiculing the flag and what it stands for.