Wearing the flag

An administrator at a high school near San Jose, Calif., sent five students home Wednesday after they refused to remove their American flag T-shirts and bandannas -- garments the tax-paid officials deemed "incendiary" on the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo.

The five students were told by Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez of Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., that they must turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home.

One of the boys' mothers told NBC Bay Area, "They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it."

Mind you, the kids could have worn red T-shirts with a gold hammer and sickle, or shirts displaying the countenance of a mass murderer such as Mao, Lenin or Che Guevara -- that would have been fine.

In fact, more than 100 students were spotted wearing the colors of the Mexican flag -- red, white and green -- as they left the school, including some who had those colors painted on their faces or arms.

Most Mexican-Americans are proud of the country to which they or their ancestors came in search of freedom and opportunity. If there are really Mexican-American youths in this high school who could be expected to explode in violence at the sight of the American flag on "their day," it is those violent youths the administration should have dealt with.

In the meantime, did the school decline to raise its American flag on Wednesday, instead raising a different colored flag to show it had become a colony of some other nation? Did Felipe Calderon subsidize that day's instruction?

Do Irish Americans take offense at the display of the American flag on St. Patrick's Day, or Italian-Americans at the display of the Stars and Stripes on Columbus Day? Of course not.

What happened at Live Oak High School on the fifth of May is political correctness run amok. Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez should be fired immediately.