Idiom: red, black and blue

Red states voted for President Bush. Blue states voted for John Kerry.
Black and blue is a colorful way of saying "bruised and battered".

The presidential campaign was vicious and the political parties have not reconciled.

Please see this headline:

Red, Black and Blue

It's not just immigrants and progressives who are noticing that something is very wrong with the USA PATRIOT ACT. From the New York Times Monday: "A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act. ... The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten."

One thing to add to what Noddy said, "red, white and blue" our are national colors, so red, ___, and blue automatically has an American connotation.

Substituting "black" for "white" is a way of inverting that, kind of like an upside-down flag.

I'd take it as a combination of the black + blue connotation Noddy mentioned, and a "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" sort of connotation -- a blot on the United States.

Thanks, Sozobe.

Don't forget, in our culture, black is also a color of mourning.

thank you all, now I got it. I thought it was an idiom.

If you need labels, I'd say "play on words" or "extended metaphor".

Sozobe, I feel bound to point out that red, white and blue are also the colours of the British flag (which we call the Union Jack, as I believe you sometimes call the Stars and Bars). The roundels on our military aircraft are also red, white and blue. The colour combination is not exclusively American!

Ewood--

The current American flag is known as "the Stars and Stripes". The confederate flag was "the Stars and Bars".

Last year we grabbed the red, white and blue. This year we'll probably go for orange, yellow and green.

If you're not with us, you're left with black and white and shades of purple, the colors of mourning.

Oh, it's certainly not exclusively American. Nonetheless, if you say "Red, white and blue", there is a strong American connotation.

Take a look at the Google results for "red, white and blue":

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22red,+white+and+blue%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8