Misappropriating the Name

of God and Country.

Walking down the street today I saw embroidered on a professional young man in a suit's yarmulke "Pink Floyd." This, I confess, stopped me in my tracks. It has me thinking of the song "Stairway to Heaven" but this also had me wondering if it was rabbinically approved attire. Can you imagine the advertising bonanza if people can start advertising on their yarmulkes? What's next "The Pepsi Generation," "Light and Lively Yogurt" or "Kosher and FDA approved Ballpark Franks." Something about "Pink Floyd" on a Yarmulke sort of demeaned for me the meaning of the Yarmulke which to me signals the protection of God over the believing Jew. Pink Floyd- not so much.
Imagine if I put for example in a beautiful oil painting of a crucifixion the face of Elvis in Jesus' place- sacrilege some would shout and I wouldn't take issue with it.

Context is everything. Taking the Lord's name in vain is a big 'no no.' You can say "Jesus Christ thank you" and "God bless you" but if you say "Jaeeeesus Christ! you Fool!" you are liable to Gehenna (that trash heap surrounding Jerusalem.) "Jesus F-ing Christ" is definitely hellworthy stuff.

Impersonating a police officer or an FBI agent is a crime. Impersonating an attorney when you are only a private investigator is a crime. Acting like a lawyer when you are not one is called "the unauthorized practice of law" and can get you in deep trouble. So if you only took two years of law school and have no degree and no bar entered you as a member putting "attorney" on your business card is just fraud. Plain and simple. Calling yourself something you are not is just sleazy and flatly dishonest.

What about an office, not a person? Say I want a commercial competitive advantage so I want to call myself the US National Aeronautics Development Lab when I am really a division of Boeing. That sounds a bit misleading don't you think. Even if they get government defense contracts, it still sounds a bit misleading, don't you think? There is no such entity to my knowledge and for a reason I imagine. Any defense contractor would I am sure like to be able to call themselves the US National whatever- it would signal to the foreign contractors that they were somehow more official than the rest of them and catering favors with them is catering favors with the US Government somehow. That is a no no. It would suggest some sort of foul in the trademark or false advertising area that the FTC prosecutes. It might even run afoul of State Department purposes in some contexts.

So what about the US National Lourdes Pilgrimage Office. This actually does exist. (http://www.lourdes-pilgrimage.com/) Is there such a division of the US State Department? No. Is there such a Division of USAID, which is under the US State Department? No. Is there such a Division of the White House? No. It is a private for -profit commercial enterprise run by a suburban Maryland housewife out of her house. It is an exclusively Catholic Pilgrimage Tourist Travel office. Nothing governmental about it. In fact, it would run deeply afoul of the Church-State Separation Doctrine if there were such an office of the US State Department because it is not only exclusively Catholic, but it is peculiarly Dominican, an order of Catholicism that a lot of American Catholics have issues with. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17728112
My personal experience is that it is the seat of the most virulently ignorant misogyny and nastiness against women in all of Christendom (not all of them, but some of them need to grow up). They have a competing "White House" -called the Dominican House of Studies-across from Catholic University in Washington, DC that rivals the actual White House in size and looks like a medieval castle of sorts. They boast an Archbishop from Washington of their order who now sits in the Holy See in an official Position. Recall that the Holy See is a Foreign Government. Friendly, but Foreign.
Some Protestants believe that the Catholic devotion to the intercession of saints dangerously borders on the prohibited practice of Necromancy, or consulting with spirits of the dead, which is flatly prohibited in the First Testament Scriptures. They find Catholic practices in large part laden with superstition and idolatry. Thus an exclusively Catholic Travel office of exclusively Catholic pilgrims, that gives free trips for Priests and Seminarians is something that would never be given an official office or department status with the US Government.

Yet this suburban housewife in Maryland gets away with calling her little enterprise, under the "spiritual guidance" of a Dominican Friar THE US National Lourdes Pilgrimage Office. Not one of a thousand tourist offices running pilgrimages to Lourdes annually but THE US National Office.

Why should anyone care about this deception and misrepresentation? Who cares really- ?
The fact is that this implicitly misrepresents not only to customers (innocent pilgrims who may naively think they are on some sort of official government mission by paying this women for travel arrangements or at least that is the apparently intended inference) but to the WORLD in which she travels and contracts that she has almost Ambassador status as the Director of this office. No one elected her to anything in the real US government, not the imaginary shadow Dominican one, no one appointed her Ambassador to anything, but she deals with airlines and tourist and travel functionaries abroad and hotels and rental bus services and meal providers and anyone else affiliated with a pilgrimage as THE US NATIONAL LOURDES PILGRIMAGE OFFICE. I wonder if she shnookered Air France (owned in large part by the French government) into thinking she is officially on US government business for free first class upgrades.

The European countries and people in them who do not have a constitutional separation of church-state doctrine may think that this is actually a legitimate US government entity or office because the concept is not all that historically alien to them to have religious endeavors endorsed by the government. It would be an easy sell, particularly in a place like Spain.

I, am not a competitor so it doesn't affect me a penny whether this woman runs this scam. I for one, as an American, however, am offended. There ought to be a law. And there is- somewhere in the bowels of the FTC. http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/false-advertising.html