Stars and Bars:

Today’s L.A. Times story about Sam Raimi, the director of Spiderman and Spiderman 2, started with these paragraphs:

Most of the furnishings in Sam Raimi’s office on the Columbia lot seem accidental — things that have survived the siege of finishing “Spider-Man 2.” There’s the big monitor on a cart stuffed with playback devices, the tinfoil taped to the windows to keep sunlight (and inquiring eyes?) out, the well-worn couch and coffee table. But what fills the wall behind his desk is clearly no accident — an American flag that’s about as long as Raimi, at 5 feet 9 inches, is tall.

Since Hollywood is a part of our nation where the “stars and bars” in most directors’ lives are not hung on the wall, and given that the very last images of his film feature a pair of such flags waving in the breeze after his hero has created them on a typical web-slinging swing down a Manhattan avenue, the question seems inevitable: What do the flags mean to Raimi? . . .

Now, as best I can tell, the only standard meaning of “stars and bars” is the first Confederate flag (thanks to Wikipedia for the image):

A few dictionary checks (for instance, one through dictionary.com) confirmed that this is the only standard meaning of “stars and bars.” Am I missing some deep joke or reference here? Or did the author just err?

I mention this because I think this minor error (if error it is) is relevant to a broader point I’d like to make about writing; but before I build too much on this, I’d like to make sure that it is indeed an error. So if you have a plausible explanation for why the story might be right after all, please let me know at volokh at law.ucla.edu.