Well, the headline should sum up exactly how silly the situation is, but we'll endeavor further because people continue to amaze us.

The Hampton Inn in Springfield, OH, has an American flag. Two days before the U.S. tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, the hotel had an issue: the flag wasn't in the best shape. So, maintenance came along to replace Old Glory. Unfortunately, maintenance only got the flag half-way down before it got stuck.

Assistant manager Connie Smith told MSNBC:

"He was trying to lower it down and it got stuck ... and it got stuck at half mast," Smith said. "It was raining, we've had non-stop rain for the past two or three weeks. The rope was slippery, it was so rainy, so windy, we just couldn't mess with it."

Of course, people tend to notice when a flag is at half-mast. Putting two and two together as only common Americans can, residents assumed the hotel was mourning Osama bin Laden. Of course.

But the real deluge began Wednesday morning. "My first call was from a woman whose son was a sergeant in the army. She thought it was disgraceful," Smith said.

"It was all over Facebook. I got a call from a man who said his boss told him about it at a meeting of 20 to 30 people," she added.

"It started getting out of hand. One person said we needed to be run out of town," she said, adding that another said the flag had to be fixed or he would "come out and chop that flagpole down."

"The whole town thought we were supporting bin Laden. So many people really had a fit about it. They were calling the local newspaper, they were calling the police. I didn't realize how patriotic our city is," she added.

And dumb. Don't forget dumb.
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