Now that we Americans are exhausted from wrestling with the monumental issue of what to do with our monuments, we can now tackle the issue of whether we should stand, kneel, sit, link arms, salute or place hands over our hearts while our national anthem is being played at NFL football games.
As always, I believe we are missing the more fundamental issue, and that is, would it be humanly possible to scrap “The Star Spangled Banner” and replace it with something I can sing, like “America The Beautiful?”
To be honest, I don’t know which is more difficult—the lyrics or the musical range of our current anthem. For one thing, I am not sure what a “spangled banner” is. I know the word “strangled,” but I am really not familiar with “spangled,” and doubt whether “Star Strangled Banner” would be an appropriate title for a national anthem.
Who nowadays says anything resembling “O’er the ramparts” or “gallantly streaming?” “Oh say does” is another tough grouping of words. Let’s be honest, it is not until the last sentence, “For the land of the free, and the home of the brave,” that we all join in full throttle.
If the lyrics are not daunting enough, try singing our anthem without changing keys or octaves or whatever else there is to try.
Most of us barely make it halfway in before we have to make adjustments right before the rockets blast off. Were somebody close enough to hear me singing, they might think my voice was a rocket that had blasted off. The truth is, I mangle our anthem every time I try to sing it, and I believe that most people barely mouth the words for fear of embarrassing themselves.
Now “America the Beautiful” is quite another story—“Oh beautiful for spacious skies; for amber waves of grain.” That’s more like it. A moron can remember those words, and there is no high note to be found anywhere. The only problem with this patriotic song is there are four different verses, and some people insist on singing all four. Those people are killjoys and should be shot on sight.
If we are going to insist that people stand for our national anthem, then at least we need to have a song some of us can actually sing.