opinion

The Wisconsin state flag really is a pretty bad flag

I respect a well-crafted work of trolling as much as the next person, and this week Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post published what can only be called a tour-de-force of vexillological trolling.

(Vexillology, obviously, is the science of flags. You may think I am trolling you right now with a made-up word or even a made-up branch of scientific inquiry, but I assure you vexillology is extremely real and ... actually kind of fascinating once you start down the rabbit hole.)

Here is the masterful introduction to Petri's post: "Every state flag is wrong. If you don't believe me, look at them. Here are the 50 worst." She proceeded, insult-comic-style, to roast every state's banner — and, naturally, to reap the clicks of all the people who either agreed or disagreed with her assessment of their state's flag, which I think mathematically includes everyone in the country.

But if every state flag is wrong, then no state flag can be said to be truly wrong, and we will not tolerate vexillological moral relativism.

For instance, everyone unanimously agrees that the state flag of Arizona is wonderful. It's the state of Arizona itself that is horrible, not the flag. (Just kidding, my in-laws! Ha ha ha!)

You know who else has a great flag? Texas. It's simple and clean; it has that lone star. That's a good flag.

I think it breaks some basic vexillological rules, but I am going to stand up for the flag of California, which has a cool-looking bear on it and says "California Republic." Something very weird and enjoyable about California's flag.

And some state flags are terrible. Alabama's flag is a red X on a white background. Does that even count as a flag?

This seems to be the week in U.S. history when everyone finally acknowledges that the Confederate flag is a moral monstrosity, and that's progress. It is a flag of treason and white supremacy. It's also pasted onto the state flag of Mississippi. So Mississippi ought to scrap its state flag stat and decide on state symbols that don't romanticize the slavery era.

And then there is Wisconsin's flag.

Wisconsin's state flag is basically the state seal slapped into the middle of a piece of cloth. That is bad flag design. Nobody can read those things; a kid couldn't draw them; they're weird and bad. A good flag is simple and our state seal is embarrassing. It has a badger on it. It has a couple of stiff-looking white dudes. Thumbs down.

Three years ago, a guy named Joel Christopher wrote that Wisconsin's flag just might be the worst in the nation.

"Think about it," Christopher wrote. "Our flag was so bad for so many years that the only fix the Legislature (and who doesn't want the Legislature designing a flag, right?) could figure out was to stamp the word 'Wisconsin' on it." (That change happened in 1979.)

Christopher, then an editor at the Appleton Post-Crescent, asked for reader designs for a new Wisconsin state flag. And we got some good ones! Mostly they were sort of jokey, cow- and cheese-themed. But any one that doesn't have a seal on it is probably an improvement.

But here is what Petri's post taught me: Actually the majority of state flags are the state seal slapped into the middle of a piece of cloth. Wisconsin is not that remarkable!

By the way, Joel Christopher is now the vice president of news for Gannett Wisconsin Media, which is another way of saying he is my boss's boss. So I may be risking my own job when I say: No way Wisconsin's flag is the worst.

But it is bad. Very, very bad.

Can we do better this time? Seriously, we should take another crack at the flag design. Who's got one?

Robert Mentzer is engagement editor for Gannett Central Wisconsin Media. Contact: rmentzer@gannett.com, 715-845-0604; on Twitter: @robertmentzer.