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While we're all out celebrating our patriotism in the United States of America today, I thought it might be a good time to direct your attention to the most popular way music videos display their American pride: by putting up a giant American flag and doing something in front of it.

If you think about it, it's a pretty good deal. Everyone knows what an American flag is, it looks good, and you don't have to pay anything for it to appear in your video. Plus you can do it ironically or just regular-style - it's extremely versatile. Put it in front of some bikers - bam! Patriotic. Behind a sad farmer - bam! Deep.

So how do you use an American flag in your videos? Your first option is pretty obvious. Put it up and perform in front of it. The most famous example of this is probably the Paul Hunter-directed video for Lenny Kravitz' cover of "American Woman".

Last night, Kanye West released the song “New Slaves” by projecting the music video onto the side of 66 buildings across the world. One of the projection locations, on the side of the Museum of Design & Arts near Columbus Circle in New York, was close enough for us to go check out, so we drank a bunch of caffeine, put on our coolest shoes, and headed down to the museum.