Blatant means (1) glaringly conspicuous, or (2) offensively noticeable. Though a blatant thing may be offensive, what’s important is its conspicuousness. Flagrant means conspicuously bad, offensive, or reprehensible. So, while flagrant things are typically conspicuous, the badness or offensiveness is what’s key. The difference can be subtle, but most things that are blatant or flagrant are more clearly one or the other.
Examples
In the following examples, flagrant would make more sense than blatant because the thing being described is conspicuously bad, not offensively conspicuous:
James’ camp has denounced the suit as a blatant attempt to capitalize on the attention LeBron will receive in the run-up to his announcement tonight. [The Hollywood Gossip]
Any reasonable person would agree that what these men did outside the Philadelphia polling place was clearly an attempt at voter intimidation and a blatant violation of the Voter Rights Act. [SmallGovTimes]
A city schools superintendent is independently trying to open up charter schools that would compete for the same struggling students served by her own district — a blatant conflict of interest, critics charge. [New York Post]
And in the following examples, the thing being described is glaringly conspicuous but overtly bad or offensive, so blatant works well:
Some movies seem so blatant an effort to appeal to a specific target audience that they ought to come with a viewers’ advisory warning. [USA Today]
With pressure for video replay mounting after two blatant missed calls at the World Cup, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said soccer’s governing body will reopen the issue after the tournament. [NBC]
In these examples, blatant might make more sense than flagrant because the actions are more obvious than reprehensible:
The flagrant “F**ck U” caught in press shots is very clear and further supports opinions of Lilo’s roguish approach to her legal predicament. [The Wrap]
We hesitate to even include Suárez’s flagrant handball on this list . . . [Vanity Fair]
And in these examples, flagrant works because the emphasis is on the actions’ reprehensibility rather than on their obviousness:
But eventually things turned bad. Prosecutors in Warsaw charged him with flagrant mismanagement of a chain of hard-currency exchange stores, and police wanted to question him about illegal car trading. [Washington Post SpyTalk Blog]
A second United States senator complained Thursday about American military assistance to Somalia’s government, which the United Nations considers one of the most flagrant users of child soldiers in the world. [NYT]
