Police are investigating what appears to be bleached American flags that someone placed atop the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not clear who put them there. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are meant to represent America’s faded glory. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are a symbol of America’s purity and virtue. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are proof that the popular post-9/11 bumper sticker featuring the red, white and blue and proclaiming “these colors don’t run” is not true. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are an homage to Melville’s incomparable chapter 42 in Moby Dick, The Whiteness of the Whale. (Moby Dick is 163 years old, the flags are approximately 163 centimeters tall, Melville once worked downtown near the bridge.)
The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are a clever promotion for the new record from White Flag, a California punk rock band formed in 1982 with Jello B. Afro on bass. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge signify surrender but not in a sense of an American surrender–rather downtown Manhattan has surrendered to Brooklyn in the ferocious avant-garde borough culture battles. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are an installation by a Brooklyn artist to see how many tweets she could get for her project “The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge.” The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are an installation by the last Manhattan artist to see how many Instagram shares he could get for his project “The Brooklyn Bridge White Flags.” The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are psychological warfare created by terrorists to inflict self-doubt upon the American public, creating a ghostly image of its most potent symbol. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are an homage to the artist Jasper Johns, who is 84 years old. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are spooky and foreboding. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are uplifting and holy. The white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge are what you want them to be, whatever the intentions of the vandal.
