Tuesday, May 02, 2006

 

Gimme That Old-Time Jingoism!

The right, in their ever-on-the-job-to-preserve-American- values, has flipped out over people singing the National Anthem in Spanish. How subversive, they say, not to sing it in English. According to the far right, you can almost hear bin Laden chuckling in glee anytime The Star Spangled Banner is sung in anything but English.

But what will poor Senator Lamar Alexander do?

http://usinfo.state.gov/esp/home/topics/us_society_values/national_symbols/anthem_spanish.html —which is, yes, the State Department web site, has four different versions of it in Spanish. Back in 1919, even, the US Department of Education commissioned a version in Spanish. We all know, of course, that State is filled with com-sym--er, al-Qaeda symps; and think of the number of foreign born anarchists and communists who had infiltrated the Department of Education back in 1919! We know now, however, that the communists and anarchists, the socialists and Islamicists, the agnostics and atheists are all fronts for that same old Godless anti-Americans freedom-haters that want to destroy the American Way Of Life.


FACT CHECK: U.S. Government Commissioned Spanish-Language ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ in 1919
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/02/spanish-anthem/


The right wing is up in arms over a new version of the Star-Spangled Banner written in Spanish. Last week President Bush stated that “the national anthem ought to be sung in English.” Yesterday Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a resolution requiring the Star-Spangled banner to be sung only in English:

That flag and that song are a part of our history and our national identity. … That’s why in 1931 Congress declared the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem. That’s why we should always sing it in our common language, English.

In his press release, Alexander said the Star-Spangled Banner has “never before…been rendered in another language.”

But in 1919, the U.S. Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The State Department’s website also features four-separate versions of the anthem in Spanish.

It appears xenophobia isn’t part of the American tradition.

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