

Like a bad penny, the Confederate flag just won’t disappear — even in Utah — despite the negativity it brings.

The AFL-CIO, by all accounts, staged a successful Labor Day celebration at Magna’s Copper Park on Monday, with about 10,000 people enjoying the festivities, including food, games and a car show.

Several legislators attended — Republicans and Democrats alike — and some posted on their Facebook pages what a good time they had.



But among the vehicles on display was a vintage pickup with American flags sticking up from both sides of the cab and a Confederate banner waving from a mount in the middle. The door sported a painting of interlocking U.S. and Confederate flags, while the front license plate had a Confederate symbol as well.



Attending legislators I talked to did not notice that truck nor did Utah AFL-CIO President Dale Cox, who said he received no complaints about it.

“In this great country, it’s someone’s right [to display the flag], but you have to scratch your head,” Cox said. “With all the hate and discontent going around, it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire.”

With Confederate symbols and statues losing favor in Southern communities and backlashes coming from white supremacist groups, the display of the Confederate flag is causing increasing discomfort and has led to some violence.

A Confederate flag logo was displayed at the Draper Days Parade earlier this summer by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the bigoted banner popped up weeks later on a car in the demolition derby at the Utah County Fair.

Two years ago, the parade committee in Magna, the same community where the vintage truck displayed the controversial symbol Monday, refused to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to display the Confederate flag or its likeness during the township’s annual celebration.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A 1942 Chevrolet pickup sports a Confederate flag and display during a Labor Day event at Magna's Copper Park on Monday, Sept. 4, 2017.

Airport propaganda? • In what appears to be an echo chamber from President Donald Trump’s carping about CNN, Salt Lake City International Airport and Mayor Jackie Biskupski are being accused of promoting fake news.

The latest complaint from a Scotts Valley, Calif., resident accuses Biskupkski of having a “deviant left-wing bureaucrat” on her staff. The evidence? The selection of CNN as the news source on all the television monitors throughout the airport.

“You are spoiling the travel of the vast majority of us who switched off CNN long ago,” the man wrote to Biskupski and copied to Salt Lake City news outlets.

“We want some fair and balanced news, a food channel, a sports channel,” he wrote. “Anything but the crap you are giving us.”

Airport spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said the letter is indicative of correspondence the Salt Lake City airport and others around the country have gotten about airing CNN in their terminals since Trump won the presidency.

She said the letters about CNN appear to be part of an organized campaign.

“The Salt Lake City International Airport is required to follow all of the city’s purchasing and procurement rules and regulations. These rules and regulations prevent the airport from selectively choosing providers for airport services, such as news broadcasting in the gate-seating area,” Volmer wrote in an email. “The airport publishes the opportunity for services, such as news broadcasting, and then selects a supplier based on the responses received.”

She said CNN was the sole provider to respond to the airport’s request for proposals from news organizations. The airport cannot air another network if one did not respond to the request.

Volmer said the full-service restaurants and food court in the airport are not bound by the procurement rules and air various news and sports feeds on their TV monitors.

Some might even be fair and balanced.