Desert Museum strikes colors
Complaints, threats over Mexican flag prompted removal
The Mexican flag flies no more over the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum — and the U.S. flag is gone, too.
The museum's board of trustees voted to remove the flags — which had flown side-by-side since 1954 — after receiving complaints and threats about flying the Mexican flag.
Questions from visitors about why the Mexican flag was being flown on U.S. soil escalated in the past couple of years, said board chairwoman Sophia Kaluzniacki.
An anonymous death threat against the museum's animals made earlier this year by a phone caller also factored into the board's decision, but to a lesser degree, she said. The desire to avoid controversy on border-related issues was the main thrust, she said.
"The Desert Museum doesn't want to make any political statement," said Kaluzniacki, a Green Valley veterinarian. "We are not a political institution so sometimes you have to consider what current issues are."
Museum employees were receiving three to five complaints a week from visitors about the presence and height of the Mexican flag, which flew at the same position as the U.S. flag, said museum spokesman Tim Vimmerstedt. Museum officials say the flag was a gift from a Sonoran governor more than a half-century ago.
It seems to me that some people in this country are growing increasingly unhinged. The fact that someone like Ann Coulter could make a very lucrative, successful career spouting her inanities (see Ann Coulter’s Heaven) is proof that mainstream thought has taken a sharp turn into wackadoodle land.
