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In Britain we require the BBC to be "fair and balanced" in it's reporting. Flag pins are out, as are flags in the top left hand corner of the screen when the news is on.
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I didn't realize that -- it explains why you may see it as odd here. Here, we don't have that rule, and I see no problem with it. Oh, and "fair and balanced" has a different trademarked meaning here, as you know.
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American patriotism makes perfect sense given the DIVISIONS within the nation.
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I agree with Yorick on this. In the U.S., the single thing that binds us together is that nothing binds us together. We don't share a common history (to really speak of) or culture, we come from all different places, we've had a civil war, etc. The one thing that has always been a binding ideal here has been our freedom under the law to be so very different from one another. While I realize that is basically true in many countries today, it is an ideal that we have clung to a made a totem for a long time here. So, being that so little has every been there to really bind us, we rely more heavily on the symbols behind the ideals on which our country was founded, including the flag.
On another note, I think that all countries should have a great deal of national pride and unity. You should at least love your country as much as you love your local sports team, for criminey's sake. And, while we may be under the gun for it these days, we're not the only country to have this level of national pride. I think British, Aussie, German, French, and Iraqi national pride are examples of ones that run pretty high as well.