"Bombs bursting in air... gave proof through the night...

[jedicord]

that our flag was still there."

It just struck me this weekend hearing that phrase that what was once a good thing (we're beating the attackers) is now a bad thing (we're beating the attacked).

God this war sucks...

[Padraig18]

1. The irony of the current mess is thick enough to cut with a knife.

Sad, isn't it?

x(

[Ezlivin]

2. Our national anthem sucks

It's time to change it to "America the Beautiful."

Then more of us could actually sing the damned thing.

[Padraig18]

3. If you use an English drinking song for the tune, ...

... then you need to be a drunken Englishman to sing it properly. BTW, I agree with you about "America the Beautiful".

:)

[Ezlivin]

5. Is that why so many citizens hoist their beers aloft during pre-game

anthem singing exercises?

[jedicord]

6. Yeah, but then you've got the "God sheds his Grace on Thee"

part. Oh the hooplah I envision if that became the "national anthem".

And, having a 1 octave voice, can't sing that song either.

[knowbody0]

4. that and the rocket's red glare

has ripped my sack since first grade. it is hubris at its most vile

[jedicord]

7. That's where it was ruined for me...

whenever I heard the Star Spangled Banner I used to envision Francis Scott Keye huddled by candlelight during the fierce battle, hoping America will defeat the attacker. And at the end Lo! we win and the flag, though tattered, still stood. Our fight at that time (to me) was glorified and just.

Why it's taken so long for the song to be ruined for me, with all of America's past unjust wars, you got me. But it's ruined on so many levels.

[knowbody0]

8. how bout the fourth of july?

we suck so bad

[jedicord]

11. Hunter S. Thompson (RIP) said it best...

"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

[Minstrel Boy]

9. Francis Scott Key descendent moves to Canada

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 4 - Christopher Key knows exactly what he would be giving up if he left Bellingham, Wash. "It's the sort of place Norman Rockwell would paint, where everyone watches out for everyone else and we have block parties every year," said Mr. Key, a 56-year-old Vietnam War veteran and former magazine editor who lists Francis Scott Key among his ancestors.

But leave it he intends to do, and as soon as he can. His house is on the market, and he is busily seeking work across the border in Canada. For him, the re-election of President Bush was the last straw.

"I love the United States," he said as he stood on the Vancouver waterfront, staring toward the Coast Mountains, which was lost in a gray shroud. "I fought for it in Vietnam. It's a wrenching decision to think about leaving. But America is turning into a country very different from the one I grew up believing in."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/national/08depart.html

[sweetheart]

10. And it ends with that humiliating question:

Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave
over the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Obviously not.

[jedicord]

12. Tears of pride become tears of sadness... n/t

[tom_paine]

13. O'er the land of TV...and the home of the Virtual Slave

Imperial Amerika really does need a new flag and a new anthem.

It simply isn't fair to all of those who lived in Free America to have Imperial Amerika (a land dedicated to none of the things Free America was about) singing the same anthem and waving the flag of the Old United States.

I think the flag issue can be easily solved. Just change the field of blue to a field of black and voila! a flag which directly represents the ideals of Imperial Amerika.

[Greybnk48]

14. I've not been able to sing the National Anthem

since I saw the "shock and Awe" a.k.a. shocking and awful bombing of Bagdad.