Across the US, symbols that stood for hundreds of years are in the process of being destroyed and erased in the name of progress. Some say the venerable ‘Star Spangled Banner’ is next on the chopping block.
Pundits laughed when rioters in San Francisco toppled a monument to Union General and President Ulysses S. Grant, along with Francis Scott Key, the lyricist behind the US’ national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ Either the vandals were clueless, or as Fox News’ Laura Ingraham tweeted, “they hate America – all of it.”
Ingraham’s tweet may have been closer to the truth. Key’s most famous work, whose stanzas ring out before the Superbowl and at the raising and lowering of military colors, is now up for reappraisal.
In a column on Thursday, Yahoo Journalist Lindsey Parker suggested that it “might be time to finally replace ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with a new national anthem.” Citing Key’s support for slavery (he prosecuted abolitionists as a lawyer), she recommended, based on interviews with activists, that the anthem go the way of Aunt Jemima and General Lee, and be consigned to the dustbin of history.
As for a replacement, Parker suggests ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ a gospel number dubbed the “the Negro national hymn” by the NAACP in 1919. John Lennon’s socialist paean ‘Imagine’ was also suggested as a more fitting, woke-ified replacement.
Based on the reactions from conservatives, Parker’s idea is a divisive one.
Perhaps the worst paragraph ever written. pic.twitter.com/J5sshdpOoM
Imagine thinking that a song with the lyrics “Imagine there’s no countries…” would be an appropriate flipping NATIONAL anthem.Not to mention that Imagine is the worst song ever. https://t.co/X5hfUwtheEpic.twitter.com/mCvBy4p2sL
I would take a knee during “Imagine”.
However, changing the national anthem isn’t just an idea peddled by liberal commenters on opinion pages. Tulsa Athletic, a women’s soccer team from Oklahoma, announced this week that they would replace the anthem with Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is Your Land,’ a folk favorite hailed for its progressive message.
A week earlier, former US national men’s soccer coach Bruce Arena called the playing of The Star Spangled Banner before games “inappropriate.
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