There's no shortage of gross stupidity in print lately; it's getting hard to choose just one thing because after you do, something comes along and tops it. Such are the utterings of one Jody Rosen, a liberal columnist who writes for various entities posing as newspapers. It's kind of appropriate that he poses as a journalist while using his html crayolas that somehow end up in print.
Choosing the LA Times as his vehicle, he proposed replacing our national anthem (The Star Spangled Banner) with ... wait for it .... Lean on Me, by Bill Withers.
First attacking the credibility of the existing anthem as elitist, sexist and racist, he explains in a few thousand words what's wrong with it. Never mind that the words were written by Francis Scott Key while he observed a British naval attack on Fort McHenry in 1814, and that it highlights that after severe bombardment our flag was still there (and it still is, for everybody to see in a DC museum) ... now it's racist because Key owned slaves. He's another 18th and 19th-century relic of history that is being sentenced in the 21st century by supposed do-gooders in the name of racial justice. These do-gooders, by the way, comprise mostly of criminals in one fashion or another. Some are social justice petty thieves ... and some are social-justice murderers.
Jody Rosen urges us to correct what he sees as a problem by replacing one anthem with another. Of course, what Jody fails to mention and probably doesn't want to, is that research into national anthem authors works both ways, and perhaps we ought to look at Bill Withers background to see if he's a saint or a sinner.
Uh-oh. It seems Bill laid his hands on his first wife in what the newspapers headlined as domestic violence in 1973-1974. Are we going to glorify a wife-beater by giving him the honor of composing our (new) national anthem?
Rosen also mentions John Lennon's Imagine as a possibility, although he discards it because it's too British. While I liked Lennon's Beatle music, I also recognize him as being rather violent in his youth (getting into more than one street fight) ... and also as a serial adulterer on both of his wives. Again, are these the values we want to glorify?
The point being, everybody has a skeleton or two rattling around in the closet. Every US President has closets full of skeletons (some more than others, but the skulls and bones are clearly there). I suspect most Senators, Congressmen and Governors also have some history they'd rather not talk about. I don't believe I've met any saints, or any candidates for sainthood in my life ... so far.
Getting back to Jody Rosen, I worry about the future of America. Ideas such as his are not only looney, they're dangerous. If trying to erase history is allowed to go forward as we've seen recently, it will be an exercise in futility. They can destroy every statue, upend every grave headstone and burn every book. It won't change a thing because what happened, happened and trying to revise it is not only educationally wrong, but it's also repugnant. We should learn from history, not try to change it to fit what we think is right or wrong now.
Finally, Jody's claim that our national anthem is elitist, sexist and racist is codswaddle. The tune may have been cribbed and changed, but the words belong to every American no matter what your status in life is. It's our flag, it's our anthem and Jody, here's a clue:
Stick your idea of replacing the national anthem up your ass.
That's probably where the idea came from in the first place, anyway.
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