A hospital on Cape Cod has ordered employees not to wear yellow ribbons because reminders of the war (which is all but over, by the way) may be upsetting to the patients.
A hospital on Cape Cod has ordered employees not to wear yellow ribbons because reminders of the war (which is all but over, by the way) may be upsetting to the patients.
Perhaps that’s what it was in that song (over two decades ago), but it’s not what it means to most people now. It’s like the lawsuit brought by two black women against Southwest Airlines because a stewardess said the children’s rhyme “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe…”
Until the lawsuit, no one in the country knew it originated as “catch a n—-er by the toe.” You can’t attribute a meaning to a gesture when no one knows what the original meaning is.
And refusing a guy entrance to the mall for a pro-peace t-shirt is just dumb, unless of course there was something more to the message on the shirt that we don’t know about. Something provocative and likely to cause a confrontation.
The bottom line is that yellow ribbons are non-offensive and banning them is silly. Will they ban American flag lapel pins too?