A Stitch in Haste

Political correctness or Third Millennium common sense?

The Swiss government is hosting two days of talks in Geneva in an effort to agree on a new emblem for the International Red Cross.

At the moment, the only two emblems recognised under the Geneva Conventions are the red cross and the red crescent.

Some countries are reluctant to use either symbol and want a new emblem which has no religious connotations.

There is a proposal for a neutral emblem: a red diamond on a white background, called the Red Crystal.

If the talks in Geneva go well, the Red Crystal is likely to be adopted at a diplomatic conference later this year.

It seems to me that the Red Cross isn't a cross at all but a red "plus sign." Is the Swiss flag offensive? Or how about all those Scandinavian flags with sideways crosses on them?

And I have far more indignation towards a flag with a sword on it than a red crescent.

And I also tend to be more indignant about what countries do than with what their flags look like.

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Meanwhile, some very silly bloggers (I won't post links) are all in a huff about the memorial for the victims of Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11.

The problem is that the memorial is called the "Crescent of Embrace." That's the problem; the psychosis is that some conspiracy theorists are convinced that the memorial actually projects the Islamic Qibla, the direction to face when praying to Mecca:



Sorry, I don't see it. The supposed Qibla doesn't bisect the ring, or even the portion truncated by True North. What exactly are the conspiracy theorists seeing?

The designer insists that the orientation was based on an attempt to maximize the length of time that sunlight shines inside the memorial.



Here's the sad part of this whole debate: It's not even a crescent — it's a broken ring, a fragment of a circle. A crescent goes from a point to a thicker width to a point. This isn't that. (Note: Apparently "crescent" is a generic architectural term that in fact means any curve; an Islamic-style "crescent" is more correctly referred to as a "lunar crescent." I defer to any architects among my readership who can explain it better.)

Perhaps it was indelicate, even foolish, to name the memorial the "Crescent of Embrace" in the first place. I would not have voted for that name. But a grand, subversive, Islamic sick joke?

As comedian Lewis Black has noted, the single biggest problem with Islamofascists is that they don't have a sense of humor. Why are we losing ours?

Similar thoughts from Republic of T.

POST SCRIPT: New Orleans is the "Crescent City." Discuss.