When a college football team makes “Lets Roll” its slogan, is it patriotism or profiteering?
By Keith Olbermann Aug. 07, 2002 | As the first prisoners of war began to stagger back from Vietnam in the early ’70s, my friend and colleague Jeff Greenfield was driving around one of the many unidentifiable outskirts of Los Angeles when his gaze fell on one of those giant Southern California gas stations you see everywhere, with a movie-marquee-style billboard at its center. Jeff swears the proprietors had posted this message of homecoming and tribute: “Free Lube Jobs for All POWs.” Damning with faint respect is probably as old as the country itself. If David McCullough’s next biography informs me that one of the few remaining unprofiled Founding Fathers had, in 1775, christened his plow oxen “Lexington” and “Concord,” I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Appropriating the transcendent for our own personal use — whether to make a buck or enhance the meaning of our lives — is all-American. Still, there is something over-the-top about Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden’s selection o
