Am I the Idiot?

I just got a column into the local newspaper, urging people to "look on the bright side" of Minnesota's new flag. I pointed out a bunch of reasons why, in my opinion, it's an improvement on the old flag and will, over time, grow to become a point of state pride. I also answered some objections that I've heard floating around, such as the charge that the new state flag is a ripoff of the flag (or a flag) of Somalia. And despite my pointing out that the similarities between them are really very slight, I've already received two voicemails from irate readers who, in one case, called me a f***ing idiot and, in the other, told me to look at the flag of Djibouti.

Well, here for comparison is the flag of Somalia.

Notice that, instead of an 8-sided star in a K-shaped (or abstractly Minnesota-shaped) canton of a contrasting shade of blue, Somalia's flag has its 5-pointed star in the center of a solid blue field. I don't think any reasonable person would confuse them.

Just to be sure that I was looking at the right flag of Somalia, here's a former flag of the Somali region of Ethiopia:

And here's the flag of one of Somalia's constituent regions:

We're not going to get confused with those, are we? I mean, the flag of that region within Somalia has one big white, 5-pointed star on a blue field at the fly end, and two smaller, green, 5-pointed stars on a triangular, white canton that points toward the center of the flag. If you said "white star on a blue field with an angular canton in a contrasting color" but didn't actually look at this flag, you might think it was a description of the Minnesota flag. But saying they're the same flag would be ridiculous. And as for the Somali Region, forget about it. The angle of the blue canton points the wrong way; the star has the wrong number of points; and those three stripes, including two colors nowhere near Minnesota's new flag, clinch the case. There's no mistaking the two flags for each other.

And here is the flag of Djibouti, which is supposedly even more similar to Minnesota's new flag than the Somalian examples:

Really? I don't see it. Again, look at the shapes, the angle, the stripes, the colors, the number of points on the star. Red, 5-pointed, on a white canton, a triangle pointing toward the fly end, with two stripes, one of them green. Two of those colors aren't even on our new state flag. And am I the idiot for not being able to see how a red star on a white triangle, pointing outward from the hoist, is exactly similar to a white star on a dark blue, K-shaped canton? I ask again, am I the idiot?

Meanwhile, I would now like to point out several examples of international flags that no one seems to have trouble telling apart despite their mutual similarities being much more pronounced than the supposedly identical Minnesota and Djibouti or Somalia flags. Like these three countries – Bangladesh, Japan and Palau. My goodness! How do they tell each other's flags apart?

Or how about these flags, representing (respectively) Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Oh, my gosh! How could they possibly expect people to keep those straight?

And finally, with no further visual aids, consider all the umpty-ump countries whose flags comprise three stripes, horizontal or vertical, some of which are actually almost identical ... and if their similarity hasn't been a problem, what's wrong with Minnesota's truly unique and distinctive flag? It doesn't look remotely like the flags these folks are saying are exactly the same. I think they need to have their eyes checked.