The Star-Spangled What?
Posted on Nov 12, 2008 - 8:44am by Diane Sontag in General
I watched a fair amount of Olympic coverage with my children this summer. We watched quite a few medal ceremonies, and heard a lot of national anthems. But I saw very few athletes singing the lyrics of their own country’s anthems, the United States included.
Did I miss something? Was there an international agreement to have the athletes NOT sing their own national anthems?
Lacking that, what could it be? Are these nationalistic songs just not ‘cool’ enough to sing? Is there an informal, unspoken agreement among the athletes that if your lips mouth the lyrics during the medal ceremony you are just not cool?
Could it be these national anthems are too difficult to sing? I know our own Star-Spangled Banner presents some unique challenges with its broad one-and-a-half octave range. Perhaps the vocal chords are muscles that do not get warmed up by our Olympic athletes?
Could it be the lyrics are too difficult for these young athletes to utter? Some of the words and phrases in the Star-Spangled Banner would seem rather obscure compared to the lexicon of today’s youth. When was the last time you heard someone say ‘O’er’ or ‘gallantly streaming’ or ‘gave proof through the night?’
As you can tell by the tone of my tome, I am not pleased. You might even call me distraught.
Last week my eight year old daughter asked me to sing our national anthem with her. Her friend from down the street had learned it at school and my daughter wanted to be able to sing along with her friend, so the motivation to learn presented itself. My daughter found she could not sing along very well and asked me to print out the words for her. We sang it together a few times, and then she began to teach herself, line by line, starting over from line one whenever she forgot or mispronounced a single word. This afternoon she proudly sang the entire Star-Spangled Banner word perfect for me, unassisted. A quick check with little brother revealed he had picked up about eighty percent of it in the process.
I remember being forced to memorize the national anthem in elementary school. I do recall it was not one of our favorite tasks. That was an understatement, we learned as we shared our opinions during recess. It was just one of many patriotic songs we all learned in music class.
If I could learn the Star-spangled Banner in elementary music class, and my eight year old daughter could decide to learn it and accomplish that in a few days, any Olympic athlete should be able to also accomplish this feat. Heck, I would have been happy to volunteer to fly over with them to Beijing and teach it to all of them on the plane ride to China.
Although my children saw many examples of good sportsmanship and heroic efforts on the part of skilled athletes from many nations, what did they learn about patriotism? What kind of example have the world’s athletes given to the children of the world?
Why bother to represent a country at the Olympics if you cannot even sing the lyrics to your own national anthem? Why bother to learn these outdated, archaic songs, anyway? Why sing them at all?
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Unfortunately, there appears to be a concerted effort in schools and many civic organizations to denigrate and otherwise train patriotism OUT of the population. This fits in very well with the nearly universal effort in public schools to indoctrinate children into global socialism at the expense of “nationalism”. Any show of patriotism is treated with ridicule, shame and punishment-right along with any show of religion. After all, we cant smooth the way for Global Socialist Governance if people are nationalistic, now can we? If you think this is scary, check out the requirements for applying for a job in the Obama administration: their extensive application not only wants to know if you own any firearms, but if you ever belonged to the Boy Scouts! Of course, the Boy Scouts swear allegiance to God, county and a moral code-we sure cant have THAT!
Linda do you forget we where told the US wins to many medals an any show of patriotism would be a slap in the face of other nations?I mean how could what use to be the melting pot of the world could be so well how could we rub it in the nations face that we come from.[I thought we are all Americans not some other nation]
Diane,
I also watched a fair amount of the Olympics this year and was truly embarrassed for our athletes, the US Olympic Committee, and especially for America. Some athletes tried to fake it, but most had no clue about the words to the song. I think they should take you up on your offer to teach them the song on the flight over!