No Rock And Roll Fun

JETHRO TULL FALLS SLIGHTLY SHORT OF DIXIE CHICKS: We know this was from before Christmas, but it's still an extraordinary tale: Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull was forced into an awkward climbdown when he told a US paper he hated seeing the American flag everywhere. Suddenly realising he was looking at having his ass probed every time he passed through an American airport, he took to the web to back track:

"I really didn't understand - even after 35 years of visiting the USA on a regular basis - that this symbol had such fierce resonance for so many people as is now apparent to me."

Hang about... you're a sentinent human being, who hasn't spent any time in the last fifty years living chained to a radiator in Beirut - and yet you didn't realise that Americans cherish their flag that much? You didn't wonder for a moment why their national anthem was named after the flag rather than the nation? Why the US gets more upset when they see the Stars and Stripes being burned on telly than they do when it's limbs and gizzards of their troops? It's only just now occuring to you that perhaps Americans treat the flag which they spend every school day pledging their alliegance to with some degree of respect? You managed to notice that the stars and stripes is as common a sight in the American urban landscape as indecipherable graffiti is in ours?