The Donald and the flag

Some controversies can only happen in the town of Palm Beach ...





LIGHTEN UP, SIP A MACCHIATO, AND LET THE DONALD FLY HIS GIANT FLAG
Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Edition: Palm Beach Section: LOCAL Page: 1B
Byline: HOWARD GOODMAN COMMENTARY

If you are Donald Trump, by gum, you should be able to do whatever the heck you want.

This is because you are the richest man on earth and you have the most luscious string of wives and ex's, the most successful casinos and the top-rated show on television.

Well, maybe you're not exactly the very richest person. And maybe someone else has a more profitable casino and a more popular show ... but let's not nitpick. These are the kind of piddling details that obsess the sort of losers who hear the words: "You're fired!"

If you are The Donald, you are not impeded by the little facts that hamper smaller men. You do not let yourself be bound by little laws.

The Town of Palm Beach does not understand the grandiosity of The Donald.

Palm Beach is hassling him for erecting a 15-by-25-foot American flag last week at his Mar-a-Lago Club. It's on an 80-foot flagpole.

The town code says flags can't be larger than 4 by 6 feet.

Trump's is 15 times larger.

The Trump flagpole is almost twice the permitted 42-foot height.

The Palm Beach Planning, Zoning and Building Department has told Trump that he'll have to take the Grandest Old Flag down or get the variances needed to keep it up.

I say: Lighten up, people. This is a flag, for crying out loud.

Albeit a flag that you normally see over a used-car lot.

It's not like Trump tarted up the Mar-a-Lago compound in brass and glass, like those blinding office buildings of his in Manhattan.

It's not like he put 20-foot letters spelling T-R-U-M-P on the sea wall of the Intracoastal, the way he does all over Atlantic City, N.J.

No. What we have here is the simple gesture of a man who happens to possess a galaxy-size ego, expressing his love of country as he measures all things: the larger, the glitzier, the more expensive, the better.

Trump has been putting mega versions of Old Glory in other resorts he owns, including Trump International Golf Club outside West Palm Beach. Usually, without incident.

He should have known he'd run into trouble in Palm Beach, which was dead set against his presuming in 1993 to barge into town in the first place and turn the historic, 100-odd room Mar-a-Lago estate into a private club.

They do things differently on the moneyed isle.

Where else, for example, would the natives refuse to let in Starbucks?

You may have heard about this boiling controversy. In August, the Town Council voted 3-2 to allow a Starbucks in a courtyard of shops on Worth Avenue. It would be the island's first. The nearest Starbucks stores are in downtown West Palm Beach.

The 25-seat cafe wouldn't be visible from the street, but when Palm Beachers heard about this outrage, the reaction was hotter than a Cafe Americano without a protective sleeve on the cup.
E-mails poured into Town Hall, alarmed at "transients" and "an influx of t-shirted coffee drinkers, slopping down the Avenue, dropping their paper cups who-knows-where."

Only in Palm Beach would $4 coffee bring wails of, "There goes the neighborhood."

Just as with Trump's flag, the opponents say that Palm Beach's understated and unique way of life would be severely damaged by the intrusion of a national chain. Never mind that Worth Avenue made room long ago for names such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooks Brothers and Neiman Marcus.

Buckling to the public pressure, the Palm Beach council revoked its OK on Starbucks and is scheduled to revisit the issue today.

Trump, meanwhile, sent engineers to Town Hall on Friday to show that his big flagpole can withstand gale-force winds.

Even if he proves the thing is safe, the magnate still needs variances if he wants to keep his big flag flying, said Veronica Close, Zoning Department director.

If he relents and settles for a code-approved flag, he still will need the OK of the town's Landmark Preservation Commission, Close said.

It must be hard to be Donald Trump, surrounded by mere millionaires.

Sun-Sentinel photo: Scott Fisher