View from the North 40: Proudly flying the fail flag

Some topics are of such great importance that they beg to be illuminated by the written word, though doing so endangers the writer’s very wellbeing. Thus it is, dear readers, I write this column at grave peril to myself because, I must say, the topic is a doozy.

One of the guiding principles of my life is the need to always remain humble or, better yet, self-deprecating. If I actually made a list of guiding principles, this life lesson would be highlighted in hot pink.

Here’s why: Any talk, hint, minor indication, wink, nod, slightest twitch of a smirk, out-right laugh or other clue, great or small — either direct or indirect — that indicates I feel, or may feel, the slightest bit superior to other beings and the Fates hand me a smack down of equal or greater proportion.

Usually greater than.

I hesitate to point out others’ mistakes and I can’t even tolerate it when someone else does. Someone pointed out a major error made in another Montana newspaper to me one day and I had nervous fits and nightmares for two weeks about doing the same in this paper. I was mortified for the person whose job it was to discover and correct the mistake.

So I don’t take finger-pointing lightly. Even my own mother always said that when you point a finger at someone, remember that four other fingers are pointing back at you.

(No, don’t bring up the fact that thumbs A) are not fingers and B) do not point back at you. Mother does not need Fate to exact her retribution on you. Believe me.)

With deep fear of and respect for the Great Fated Smack Down, I am here to tell you about someone else’s colossal and public blunder.

Infamous for picketing funerals of soldiers and small children, for stomping on the American flag, and for generally hating on Catholics, Jews, gays and most everything they deem “not one of us” — the Westboro Baptist Church meant to disparage the Irish for voting this week by a 60 percent margin to legalize gay marriage. Instead, they started an international incident against the Ivory Coast. Yeah, they drew the wrong flag on their hate signs.

I can see how it happened. The Irish flag consists of three wide vertical stripes: green then white then orange. The Ivory Coast flag is the opposite: orange, white then green. It’s like that time I wore a T-shirt to town inside out. Embaaarrassiiiing.

Well, kind of like that anyway.

They were marching along a sidewalk in the U.S. with hate signs and god-is-comin’-to-get-you signs and kicking around the Irish flag, alongside a sign declaring “Fag Flag” that was colored in, you got it, the distinctive orange, white and green color pattern of the Ivory Coast.

So to be like that I would have to be, say, picketing for higher wages in front of the wrong store — on the entirely wrong continent — while wearing my inside-out T-shirt that flashed “I brake for Hooters” to the crowd.

The group later claimed that they had flipped the flag on purpose to indicate distress, which almost makes sense, until you remember that you flip a flag vertically for that signal — and the Irish flag would still come out green, white, orange. I guess their impromptu PR campaign for this cause was, as the kids say, an epic fail.

Don’t worry, they saved face in the end when they tweeted that “Incidentally, God hates the Ivory Coast,” and emphasized their passion for this stance with three smiley face — because that doesn’t seem wrong at all.

And, yes, when the hands of Fate throw me under the bus of mistakes, I will steal the group’s PR philosophy.

You’ll know it’s me if you see a correction run in the paper reading something like: “In Wednesday’s paper Margie Winklesteen’s name was misspelled as ‘Marjy.’ We deeply regret that her own parents didn’t see fit to hook themselves on some phonics to spell her name like it sounds. :-) ;-) :-D”

(Why, yes, I could’ve written about the wasp that turns bugs into zombies or National Burger Day, but I wanted to flirt with danger at [email protected].)