Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 9:09 AM by Gene

NYSE plans 11 a.m. ET moment of silence

The moral equivalent of the moment of silence the croupiers observed when Howard Hughes died.

And what is a moment of silence but the aural equivalent of a yellow ribbon?

P. S.

According to one popular misconception -- evidently a by-product of the 1949 John Wayne film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," in which the female lead did just that to express her undying love for a cavalry officer -- the custom originated during or just after the American Civil War. But even though the motif of that film, not to mention its title and theme song, derived from a folk ballad dating back hundreds of years in different versions, there is no historical evidence that Americans of the Civil War period (or any period since, through the mid-20th century) actually wore yellow ribbons to express such sentiments.

The fact is, according to research published by the late Gerald E. Parsons, longtime librarian of the Folklife Reading Room of the Library of Congress, the custom didn't exist at all before 1980, when the idea of displaying yellow ribbons in honor of the 52 Americans held hostage by Iranian militants seemingly emerged from nowhere and took the country by storm -- a tribute said to be indirectly inspired by the popular song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree," composed in 1972, which in turn was inspired by an oral folktale circulating since the 1950s (for the particulars, see Gerald Parsons' essay: "Yellow Ribbons: Ties with Tradition"). [Emphasis added]

TRANSLATION: The yellow ribbon is a symbol of national defeat -- just like a moment of silence.