(Getty Images)
(CNS News) — The Los Angeles Times published a commentary on July 14 that called for cancelling the “Star-Spangled Banner” because the song apparently is racist, un-American, and aesthetically unpleasing.
The piece, by left-wing freelancer Jody Rosen is entitled, “It’s time to cancel ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Here’s what should replace it.”
“The Star-Spangled Banner” has been the U.S. national anthem since 1931 and was widely used prior to that time.
Left-wing freelance writer Jody Rosen. (Wikipedia Commons, Joe Mabel)
Rosen said, “For one thing, it’s not an especially American song,” pointing out that the tune is set to “To Anacreon in Heaven,” the anthem of a London gentleman’s club.
Rosen discussed the racial implications of the song, noting that the author of the original poem, Francis Scott Key, was a slave owner.
He also brought up recent controversies surrounding the anthem, including “viral posts on social media” decrying the anthem as a racist song, as well as a petition posted to drop the song as the national anthem. This is because of the “elitist, sexist, and racist” verses in a poem by Key, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” from which “The Star-Spangled Banner” was adapted, claimed Rosen.
Rosen also criticized the music saying, “The result is a tune that is charmless and difficult to sing, which meanders through wan melodic passages en route to a big climactic cry — the money-shot high note on “O’er the land of the freeeeee” — that defeats 99% of vocalists who attempt it.”
Rosen went on to list songs that have been suggested as possible replacements for the anthem, including John Lennon’s “Imagine” – the most pro-communist song since the Internationale — James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and more American tunes like “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and “This Land is Your Land.”
Rosen concluded that none of those suggestions would do.
He said, “Nope, none of these songs will do. At a moment when the United States is in the grip of multiple crises — convulsed by debates over racism and injustice, ravaged by a pandemic, with a crumbling economy and a faltering democracy — the very idea of a national anthem, a hymn to the glory of country, feels like a crude relic, another monument that may warrant tearing down. But if we must have an anthem, it should be far different than the one we’ve got now, positing another kind of patriotism, an alternative idea of America and Americanness.”
The song Rosen concluded that should replace the “Star-Spangled Banner” is “Lean on Me,” the 1972 ballad by Bill Withers.
He came to this conclusion saying, ‘“Lean on Me’ is a deeply American song — but it’s not, explicitly at least, a song about America.” Rosen also mentioned that the song has been “inescapable during the Black Lives Matter protests,” and has been sung by demonstrators across the country.
Rosen doesn’t mention that Black Lives Matters was founded by three radical, self-desribed “trained Marxists,” two of whom are lesbians, one “married” to a transgender “man.”
Rosen’s article generated criticism on social media. Fox News’ conservative host Laura Ingraham said, “They will not stop trying to shred every tradition and redirect America toward socialism unless they are beaten badly at the polls.”
(Twitter)
Conservative Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, mocked the article, saying, “Let’s replace it with “Everybody’s Special” from Barney and Friends.”
On his own Twitter feed, Rosen said, “National anthems are wack; ideally, the U.S. would have no official state song.”
(Twitter.)
