Taking back the anthem
One of the best fringe bennies of my job is that my boss also owns the Bellingham Bells, a summer league baseball team. So I get to write about baseball in the program and got to announce a game last year when the regular mouthpiece didn’t show up. Of course, I get into all the games free and that is a nice perk, indeed.
Tonight I sang the National Anthem. I have decidedly mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I am a direct descendent of Francis Scott Key, the mediocre poet who wrote the words. On the other hand it is a challenging, nay, excruciating, piece of music to sing. Especially without accompaniment.
On yet another hand, I can’t hear or sing it without remembering that the music was taken from a middle-European drinking song called “To Anacreon In Heaven.” On the fourth hand, I am about as far from a flag-waving, jingoistic, pseudo-patriotic neoconservative as you can get without dropping over the Marxist edge.
One thing that I am is a patriotic American who loves this country very much. Enough to have fought for it, or something, in Vietnam. I belong to the VFW and the American Legion because it looks good on my résumé.
I don’t fly a flag from my car or wear one on my lapel. It’s not necessary to prove my patriotism. I don’t support the president because he wasn’t elected, because he’s a puppet of megacorporations, and because he has the IQ of a banana slug. I supported our troops in Iraq by doing everything I could to get them back here alive.
It pisses me off that my country, my flag and my National Anthem have been kidnapped by a gang of fascist wannabes who think it’s their own private property. I’ve got news for you chicken hawks. I’m taking it back. I started tonight by singing the anthem at the Bells game. I know how to sing that sucker and, by God, I made it mine! I got those neocons in the soft seats and those rednecks in the cheap seats to stand up and cheer. Of course, they were all doing that anyway.
By the time I was finished, I was shaking. It was not from nervousness. Hell, I’ve rehearsed in front of audiences bigger than that. It was not from the cold, although it is definitely Junuary here. It was from the sheer thrill of honoring the country I love and reclaiming what is mine and yours and every damn body’s.
The coach of the visiting team sought me out because he wanted to shake my hand for that performance. People kept coming over to me in the stadium to thank me. Little did they know that they were egging on a wild-eyed anarchist. In your face, Dubya!
Part of the meme we are building here at Salon must include taking back what is rightfully ours from those who would conceal their greed, duplicity, ignorance and hatred within its red, white and blue folds. I’m doing my part. I’m singing my National Anthem three more times this summer.
9:53:17 PM 
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