We’re a Weird Country
Americans are weird. No, really; Americans are weird. We play the national anthem, wave flags, and parade active duty military and veterans around before major sports events. EVERY major sports event. Even some little league parks play the national anthem before the little tykes run out on the field to play for 30 minutes. And we love HUGE flags. Not just any HUGE flag, cover the entire football field HUGE. In fact, if you don’t get all weepy when you see that HUGE flag, you’re a reprobate and un-American. It’s like, “BE PATRIOTIC! IF YOU’RE NOT PATRIOTIC TO OUR SATISFACTION, WE’LL SLAP IT INTO YOU PATRIOTIC!!! DAMMIT!”
This is a strange custom that is unique to the US. No other country does this Kabuki play every time we gather to watch huge guys beat each other to a pulp. When did it become tradition to play the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events? Well, according to an article in Time, the first time the tune was played before a baseball game was during the Civil War in 1862 (before it was declared the national anthem), was played again before the opening game of the World Series in 1918 at the end of WWI, but didn’t really get ingrained in sports until after WWII when loudspeakers replaced live bands and they could play the tune any and every goddam where.
Up until 9/11, it was a tradition with really no controversy. We’d get up, discreetly sip our beer and wait for the song to be over so we could drink more beer. However, in 2003, when we invaded Iraq for no good reason, the US government started using the national anthem before nationally televised games as a propaganda opportunity using veterans and active military as props to whip up all those patriot emotions and tears. In 2009, the NFL started requiring players to be lined up on the field for the anthem. The government even started paying the NFL for these displays. In fact, between 2011 and 2014, the Department of Defense paid over $5 million dollars to the NFL for all the pregame red, white, and blue hoopla.
So, all this televised nationalism is really very recent and has been normalized by bribing the NFL and other major leagues to promote it every week. It’s not surprising then, that when Colin Kaepernick starting sitting out the anthem as a protest against systematic racism in America, that all the jingoists would go nuts. After being thoroughly hated on, he was then blackballed from the league even though has has one of the best records in the NFL; he also became the new punching bag for Fox Noise. The whole controversy just kind of rocked along until last week when Tweeto Jesus wandered into the mess looking for something to distract from the Mueller investigation.
Hilariously, the Orange One got more than he bargained for. Suddenly, the Great Divider actually became the Great Uniter, at least this week, by galvanizing the protest movement. The pressure on NFL owners is so great now that even THEY are taking a knee on the field, if only just before the anthem than during. The whole thing is pretty entertaining.
But let’s look at the real issue here…There is a lot of hand wringing by my conservative friends on social media fretting over young athletes daring to disrespect the (flag, veterans, active duty, our country, our patriotism… Insert your descriptor here) _______. The problem, though, is that they are not doing that. Not at all. They are exercising their right of free speech – to protest what they see as injustice.
Let’s take other examples of protests: When Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, was she protesting public transportation? Of course not. She was protesting institutionalized racism. The young black men who sat at the Whites Only lunch counter. Were they protesting lunch counters? No, they too were protesting institutionalized racism. There are many examples of civil disobedience for the greater good, and that is exactly what these young athletes are now doing. They play a prominent role in our modern culture. They can have an influence on our society, and they, led bravely by Colin Kaepernick over a year ago, are doing just that. Good on them.
So, for all my conservative buds who are fretting over this whole thing or burning their cheap Made in China replica jerseys in their trashcans in the backyard, maybe they should just think a little bit about this protest. Even today we live with the scar of the cancer that was slavery. Even today, over 150 years after it was ended, we still live with the symptoms. Even today, we still face institutionalized racism on a daily basis.
This is still a free country, and people can express themselves how they please. That is what’s happening here and the movement has grown with the inadvertent assist from Tweeto Jesus.
We can be thankful for that, even if we are just a little weird.
Since when has paying attention during the playing of the national anthem be come an issue of patriotism? Most are unaware of the protocol when the flag is presented. People talk, men wear hats, others are standing in line to buy nachos, beer and merchandise during the anthem.
Men have even been known to stand at the urinal during the playing of the anthem. At least they are standing at attention. Maybe they could be bothered to hold their hand over their heart, while holding their manhood with the other hand. Assuming they aren’t already holding a beer, or waving a flag.
1I propose simply getting rid of the anthem before all games–professional and amateur–and especially, getting rid of “God Bless America” being played in the 7th inning stretch. Before 9/11, the Orioles always played John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” (for some unknown reason) and the crowd always sang along. Other teams played other songs then.
Can we please go back to that?
2We here at Casa Veterans are pretty sick of the Troll’s brand of patriotism.
We prefer the brand that welcomes immigrants, stands up to bullies, helps disaster victims even if they DO live on an island, etc.
We must be more than average weird, eh?
3We should do a bit of research here…there are no laws just Army code concerning flags. Read that still the flag shall not be on any apparel except a patch. So the US government breaks the Code overtime a flag is on a stamp. Just a note the” flag shall never be carried flat or horizontally “. So those big flags at sporting events are wrong! I wish we were like the Canadians raucously sing their national anthem with loud voices and real pride in their county. Just a thought, trump telling me linking arms is OK, kneeling not. What if I need to sneeze can I do that …this is not a police state.
4I have got to get me a proof reader….every time not overtime!
5I like our flag and occasionally I feel like waving it, but it’s hard to feel the old way about a symbol that’s been snatched by the right wing as if they’re the only ones with any rights to it. They also act as if “under God” was an original and set-in-concrete feature of the Pledge of Allegiance, and it ain’t. The stuff they cling to the hardest is the more recent and more jingoistic stuff, and everybody’s supposed to cherish it exactly the way they do of you’re “not a real American!”
And yes, the kneeling protests have nothing to do with the flag or the anthem per se; it’s a protest of racial injustice. I’m angry about some of these trigger-happy excuses for police getting off and I’d kneel too, though someone has to help me up again.
6Where I’m staying on the Olympic Peninsula part of each year, there is some guy across the harbor who has set up loudspeakers to play the Star Spangled Banner at 8 a.m. sharp every morning…for years! It’s not annoyingly loud where I am, but I sure feel sorry for his immediate neighbors.
Brings to mind as well when I worked for years on the Alaska ferries. Depending on the captain, we weren’t anal about the flags flying. Sometimes the wind beat them up and shredded them overnight. Sometimes it was just too miserable outside in the winter (-40 chill factor, gale force winds and icy decks), but you could always count on some “patriotic” yahoo complaining to the purser that the flag hadn’t been taken down, put up, or something else. Being as we only had four hours of daylight in Southeastern Alaska in the winter, it was hardly worth the effort at times. As for not letting it touch the deck…HA! Try and stop it when you’re fighting just to hang on to it.
Personally, I have more pride in and respect for the Alaska flag. When I was sailing my boat out of country, I always flew that. People liked me a lot more when they saw it.
7“BE PATRIOTIC! IF YOU’RE NOT PATRIOTIC TO OUR SATISFACTION, WE’LL SLAP IT INTO YOU PATRIOTIC!!! DAMMIT!”
San Francisco’s The Committee in 2010 doing a bit they’ve done since the ’70s, at least.
8Many people, including celebrities, have tweeted photos of themselves kneeling. Ed Asner tweeted that he planned to kneel and, as Rhea said, he’d need help getting back up. Another tweeted a photo of “patriotic” football fans during the anthem while watching at home – sprawled on the couch, slurping beer, snarfing chips, food spilled down the front of their cheap, knock off jerseys. Yep, patriotic murkins. God I love Twitter.
9Kneeling is a sign of disrespect? Wow. Monarchs throughout the ages must be spinning in their graves. Hmmmm…..
10Golly, if Trump is looking for an example of disrespect for the flag of the United States of America, I suggest he start here:
http://gawker.com/5407005/sarah-palin-is-using-her-newsweek-cover-to-trick-you-into-taking-her-seriously
11When I was in fourth grade in the 60s I made the announcement that I wouldn’t be standing for the pledge before morning announcements. My teacher asked me what my mom would say. I told her she’d ask–“Do I have to take a day off work for this? And I’d say—“I just need a note”.
Those were were the days.
12The Defense Department gave the NFL $5 million taxpayer dollars to encourage flag waving???!!??? George Orwell would be so proud.
13OT, but very much on topic for this blog:
Far-right Texas billionaire Marcus Hiles needs a lesson on the Streisand Effect. You can help him learn by following this link:
14https://tttthreads.com/t/910908255295164416
El Jefe:
15So I’m guessing that you’re not saying the same thing as Austin folks with Keep Austin Weird bumper stickers, right? After how bad I blew the whole Ray Moore/Strange Luther thing, I need to know I got this right.
@BarbinDC: I’m with you 100% on God Bless America. Which was an okay song until it got shoved down our throats at every possible occasion and people acted like if you weren’t getting teary-eyed enough when it was being sung, you were a treasonous heathen. I, too, remember going to many O’s games when I lived in DC and Maryland and singing along to John Denver. Put me in a good mood every time. I could go the rest of my life without hearing that song again and I’d be a happy camper.
16treehugger, I’ve never been to an Orioles game but I understand that’s it’s now expected for fans to yell “O!” every time it appears in the song. Supporting the Orioles, maybe, but disrespecting the song. I wonder how many O-yellers think kneeling is disrespectful.
As for kneeling, Sir Peter Ustinov said that before his ceremony of knighting, he got a form in the mail and was expected, along other things, to check off either “I can kneel” or “I cannot kneel.” He said there seemed to be no option for checking “I can kneel but I can’t get up again.”
17All this from the man who talked during the 9/11 moment of silence.
Hypocrite. Liar. Crook. Racist. Homophone. Coward. I could go on, but why bother.
18Protest patriotically! Dress up as Mexicans and dump some bigoted policemen into Boston Harbor!
19And, El Jefe, what also burns my sox is the way 9/11 is being used by the jingoists. I do recall even the release of an eagle at a the start of a baseball game.
20When was the last time you saw any pro-golfer at the first tee
21of a tournament standing at attention hand over heart, while the national anthem was being played?
JAKvirginia @10:
Interesting backstory to the kneeling: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-how-nate-boyer-got-colin-kaepernick-to-go-from-sitting-to-kneeling/
Our national anthem is a hymn to a textile written by a rich, white, anti-abolitionist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key). Mr. Key preferred shipping freed slaves back to Africa to living with them in the ‘hood.
22Dice, Francis Scott Key and I went to the same college in Annapolis, though we didn’t overlap, and there are stories that he used to ride a cow around front campus. So he had his moments. I don’t know if he was sober at the time. Feel free to envision the scene the next time someone demands you respect the song whose lyrics he wrote.
23This too shall pass. Frankly I think it’s a diversion created by Trump so we won’t wake up and wonder what he’s up to.
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