For an attention-getter, nothing beats Old Glory.

It can make us weep when draped over the casket of a fallen soldier.

It can turn quiet a rowdy crowd at a baseball game.

It can even sell cars on Washington's birthday.

You can fly it from a pole, wear it as a lapel pin, sew it on a uniform, hang it from a wall and call it art and even print it every day on the front of a newspaper, as the Chicago Tribune does.

And if you want to get people mad, use it to make a point.

It's a cheap stunt, easily done and sure to incite the usual debate over patriotism vs. free speech.

That's what happened this week at the University of Maine at Farmington.

It all began with an assignment in an art class to create a piece of social commentary. Student Susan Crane came up with an idea: Place some flags made of tape and vinyl on a floor and see who walked around them and who walked over them.

As our news story about the event stated: "Crane, the daughter of a 25-year military veteran who describes herself as a conservative Republican, said she wanted people to think about the flag when faced with either walking over or around one placed on the ground."

Most people walked around it, which is what any thinking person would expect.

Any thinking person could have predicted what else happened: Veterans and others would react strongly and emotionally. School maintenance workers placed cardboard signs with the word "disgrace" at the display. A local American Legion member started pulling up the makeshift flags, calling the display a desecration. University President Theodora Kalikow eventually convinced him to desist in the name of freedom of speech.

We're fully in support of using a flag and just about any other sacred image to make a political or social point -- what else would you expect from a newspaper? If we're not steadfastly for the First Amendment, who would be? So we're not saying the university nor the art teacher nor the student was wrong; and neither was the other side for protesting, except when it threatened to damage the display.

But the whole things feels like a cliché-ridden play: Watch college kid poke a stick in the eye of the locals. Watch locals get all worked up. Everyone plays their usual and expected parts in a pantomime so predictable that if it were on Broadway, it would close after one night.

Flag dramas have long been and likely always will be a staple of American politics. Each generation apparently needs to demonstrate its idealism in this earnest and naive fashion, suffer its fair share of abuse and feel good about its idealism.

But as ersatz as these events have become, it remains true that the expression of even offensive speech is protected by our Constitution, and those who don't like it are free to counter-protest, but they are not free to physically stand in its way.