Best American Flag?

Lowbrow Answer: The American Flag
We're so boring. Other countries have pictures of animals or weird writing on their flags. What do we have? Horizontal bars. Awesome. And the shitty thing is that our flag is totally temporal. Every time we add a state, the design has to change. We're as flighty as that cooky Scarlett Johansson in every Woody Allen film she's ever been in.

The really silly part is that our flag looks almost identical to other world flags. Here we are claiming to be the most awesome and unique country on the planet and we're marching under a banner that people could mistake for Malaysia's. God damn you, Betsy Ross. Why didn't you sew a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex holding a Bazooka and reading a Playboy on the flag like I wanted? Now THAT would have been an American Fucking Flag.


Middlebrow Answer: The Bedford Flag
This flag was carried at the Battle of Concord in 1775. The inscription reads, "Conquer or Die." Imagine how awesome America would be if we all still thought like that in our daily lives: "Fix the economy or die." "Build a car that gets 120 mpg or die." "Figure out a way to deep-fry a Popsicle or die."

This flag is, however, kinda pink. And the armor on the arm makes it seem like the American Revolution was fought in 1328. The original is housed in the Bedford, Massachusetts Town Library, which probably means it's only ever seen by upper-middle class 5th graders on field trips.


Highbrow Answer: The Serapis Flag
The Serapis flag was flown by John Paul Jones on his boat of the same name. Jones was the original American Naval hero, careening around the Atlantic kicking the shit out of British ships. He was a 'Marauder' in the "I'm a blood-thirsty pirate who pillages foreign vessels and slaughters tyrant military officers" sense of the word, not in the "I'm a dopey kid from New Mexico who plays tight end for the Alacoma High School Marauders" way.

The best part of this flag was that it was given to John Paul Jones by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin loved the "work" that Jones was doing on behalf of the colonies, and wanted to make sure everyone knew that it was America who was sinking all those English ships. Benjamin Franklin giving you your own American flag is like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant starting their own NBA team and choosing you as their starting center.