We celebrate the decision of Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado not to represent “God Bless America” because for years we have not been representing the National Anthem. For good reasons.
First of all, Star Spangled Banner is hands down the worst song ever written, the worst nightmare of a song that can’t be sung or hummed. Worse than any Paul MaCartney song. Why Congress didn’t write it off years ago and replace it with Britney Spears’ “Toxic” is beyond us.
Second, we remain seated as a lesson to all fascists in training; the lesson is that the foundation of this Republic is twofold: equal opportunity and freedom of speech (ie, the First Amendment). If we want to sit during the national anthem, damn it, then we have the right to sit. The First Amendment, everyone seems to forget, protects unpopular speech and expression, including Nazis marching through Skokie (a Jewish neighborhood near Chicago), artists painting the Virgin Mary with cow dung, gays kissing the tongue in public, the television show Friends, and Carlos Delgado showing his opposition to the war in Iraq by not standing up for God Bless America.
From an article by Karl Taro Greenfield in Sports Illustrated this week:
Delgado says that his refusal to defend the song of God Bless America in 2004 and 2005 to protest the Iraq war was simply a logical extension of the values that he and his family had long held. “I think it’s the stupidest war ever,” he told The Toronto Star in 2004. “Who are you fighting? Now they’re ambushing you.”
Since then, big surprise, Delgado has been booed by legions of fools (Yankees fans) that no more volunteers would volunteer to fight in Iraq than we would ever teach in high school.
Finally, a public figure with drawers, like his hero Roberto Clemente.
Let them boo, Carlos, let them boo.
