Anthem Sprinting

Standing for the anthem or repeating the pledge of allegiance a pure gesture of loyalty. The meaning of the words don’t matter. Jerusalem is the de facto anthem of England, but the wild radicalism of its author is long forgotten. And I doubt if very many Frenchmen are all that bloodthirsty or still mad at Bouillé. The real issue isn’t the lyrics but to whom one must express fealty; and the apt analogy, especially in the Trump era, is to the Roman practice of sacrificing to the Emperor. Trump, who personalizes everything and hasn’t got a patriotic bone in his body, is accusing the gladiators of lese majeste.

The required sincerity is not a new thing, but new aspects are always being added to it and then treated like traditions handed down by George Washington. The NFL didn’t require players to be present on the sidelines during the anthem until 2009; prior to that point they could be in the locker room doing whatever the hell they wanted during the song. My elementary school social studies education somehow neglected to teach me that the flag and anthem represented the sacrifice of American soldiers rather than the ideals to which I pledged allegiance every morning, but now I find it taken for granted by millions that a protest of the flag is, above all else, an insult to dead soldiers, always the most potent weapon of American rhetoric. As someone who was raised to take seriously the symbolism of the American flag and the ideals I was taught it stood for, I am continually angered by the reduction of the flag’s image, and associated patriotic rituals, to kitsch, and have no patience for getting lectured on this stuff by loud patriots spilling beer on their American Flag t-shirts.

I mean Henry!

Sorry for the mistake.

Before 2009, stadiums played the anthem and then brought out the teams. Probably no particular reason; this was just the way they did things. This was changed precisely to create a political spectacle. Maybe we should go back to the old practice.

Since America is a capitalist nation it is appropriate that a market based solution be imposed.

Since time is money, let the market decide the value of the anthem ceremony.

Choose to spend your “time/money” either waiting for the ceremony to end or waiting to exit the parking lot after a post-game anthem ceremony.

Difficult things, national anthems.

There’s the bit in the Marseillaise about impure blood (that is, English or German) flowing in the furrows of our fields. Any modern European speaking of the impure blood of other peoples might not be well received on CT or equally enlightened sites.

Can’t help wishing I could remember more of the version, from the German advance in 1914, when the French government as is customary on such occasions fled to the safety of Bordeaux, shouting over their shoulders orders for less eminent Frenchmen to stand firm:
Aux gares, citoyens!
Montez en vos wagons!
Fuiyons, fuiyons
Qu’un Boche obscur
Parait aux horizons.
Further quotations welcome.

Then in God Save the King there are verses not often sung now: one praying that Marshal Wade might crush the rebellious Scots – and with due deference to CT’s Australian Jacobite, I would suggest that in 1745 most Scots were not in fact rebellious, and welcomed the crushing of those who were.

Orwell I think pointed out that the verse containing “Confound their knavish tricks, Frustrate their politics” is usually omitted, being thought to refer to the Tory party.

I can’t remember the original words to Deutschland ueber alles but I think they set the boundaries of Germany way beyond anything the EU would currently regard as acceptable.

But as far as Francis Scott Key welcoming the defeat and death of former slaves fighting for their freedom: well, there you are, that’s US history for you.

“The story isn’t available online”

It is available here https://archive.org/details/anthemsprinterso00brad . Access requires a (free) Internet Archive digital library card.

It didn’t just start randomly in 2009.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/09/19/defense-department-paid-sports-teams-53m-taxpayer-dollars-play-anthem-stage-over-the-top-military-tributes/

http://www.snopes.com/nfl-sideline-anthem/

Snopes article on the NFL and the military and $.

@11

The Spanish national anthem (and those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and San Marino) is the best.

It has no words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcha_Real

Trump has so far been quite successful in transferring his toxicity to everything he touches (and, conversely, increasing the popularity of everything he opposes). It will be interesting to see if he can discredit flagwaving jingoism.

I hope no one tells Trump about Thailand…

Standing for the King before every movie is shown in a cinema is a serious business there:

https://youtu.be/hn2j63jYw9s

Interestingly, the song is not the national anthem, but a personal paean to the King – and for the previous king this was usually a song that he himself had composed.

You are pretty much forced to stand for the King personally – and there are some pretty stiff penalties for disobeying:

On April 22, 2008, Chotisak Onsoong, an ardent republican who objects to the degree that monarchy is revered, and Chutima Penpak, a devote Muslim who object to the idolization of human beings, were charged with breaking lèse majesté laws for not standing when the Thai national anthem was played at a cinema. They launched a campaign called ‘Not Standing is No Crime, Different thinking is No Crime’. A cyber petition has been launched at http://www.petitiononline.com to collect signatures to support their cause. Some Thai signed the petition to support Chotisak and his friend. Some, however, cursed them and told them to leave the country. [Source: Prachatai, April 22, 23, 2008]

On his reasons for not standing up, Chotisak said: “If the law states that this is against the law, I will abide by the law, as the law has the real power over us. But I understand that it is not against the law, so I chose not to stand. According to some people, to stand up for the Royal Anthem may not be required by law, but it’s a tradition. Is this really a tradition? I remember reading an article, probably published on a website, that says previously the Royal Anthem used to be played after the movies finished, and no one bothered to stand, but just rushed out to go home. That was back in the reign of King Rama V, when the anthem was first introduced in theatres. The idea the anthem should be played before movies is even newer. So at what point are things considered tradition? Talking about traditions vs. rights, one finds that there are many traditions which people do not follow, and no one seems to bother. If violators of tradition are to be punished, many more jails need to be built. Traditions are man-made, not unlike laws. If they’re not appropriate, not right, anachronistic, or against people’s well being, they can be revoked. There were similar cases. For example, in 1979, there was a supreme court verdict giving a jail sentence to a man for not standing up and saying, ‘What song is this? Don’t understand a word.’ This is unlike my case where, even though I didn’t stand, I respected the rights of those who wanted to stand. I gave them my respect for their ritual observance by choosing to sit still.”

http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Thailand/sub5_8b/entry-3205.html

What’s not for Trump to like?

But the flag has been politically radioactive since Bush 41 made an issue of Dukakis vetoing a Pledge of Allegience bill. —Frant @18

I also recall in ’89 that a NYT editorial protested flag-burning (and in support of Bush 41’s demagoguery)*. I always say burning Bush, wrapped in a flag, would be symbolic speech joyfully aimed at dousing this rabble-rousing. Of course, the literal-minded can’t make this step.

Fundamentalism keeps it simple.

*It was summer so maybe the Times regulars were on vacation.

Of course America has to play the national anthem before domestic football games because there is no ball game played by other countries that they can win at, so they need to pretend their domestic game has political value in order to salvage their self respect. Perhaps if they gave up this stupid game and played rugby they wouldn’t need to do something as ridiculous as playing the national anthem at domestic games.

(Oh how I would love the USA to become a top level rugby country!)

I read recently that Xi Jinping proposed a law to force Chinese to stand solemnly to attention during the anthem, a move that attracted the usual media outrage about China being repressive. Yet in America you don’t even need a law – just social pressure and moral conformity. So much for your much-vaunted “freedom of speech”!

alfredlordbleep@25

I also recall in ’89 that a NYT editorial protested flag-burning (and in support of Bush 41’s demagoguery)

I was curious, so i lookerd it up for you. Here’s one from ’90; if it’s the one you’re thinking of, your memory seems to have done the Times an injustice.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/14/opinion/we-the-people-and-our-flag.html

Rituals like anthem playing at non-state events (where I used to live, even the local symphony orchestra was required to start every performance with the anthem), worship of the flag by school children, and generally the ubiquity of national flags, these are hallmarks of totalitarian societies. From the outside, what amazes most is that even liberal Americans hardly seem to mind the exceptional jingoism. What other countries have comparable rituals? North Korea I guess. Any others?

I can’t stand Key’s mediocre poetry or the horrible English drinking song it’s been set to. Hardly anyone can sing it well. The semi-famous singers who get trotted out at sporting events to lilt and trill their way through it usually either completely butcher it, embellish it beyond recognition, or draw it out so long they seem to be actively punishing their captive audience. I mean, lots of national anthems are really bad because they almost all emerged from the same late Victorian nationalist up welling of pomp over substance that almost killed classical music, produced a lot of very boring novels with very long sentences, and saddled a bunch of countries with tricolor flags, Great Seals with laurels and women in helmets on them, and more official flowers, birds, rocks, and nicknames than anyone knows what to do with.

In a way, the colonial territories got off easy because at least they had a good excuse to abandon their kitschy Victoriana for something actually appealing. South Africa has one of the best flags around and “Oh, Canada!” may be lacking in substance, but at least it’s catchy.

I really wish we in the United States would start acknowledging to ourselves that this absurd patriotic burlesque isn’t what it means to be an American. People in the Civil War marched to tunes like “John Brown’s Body” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom” and, yes, “Dixie.” Sure there were old tunes like “Yankee Doodle” in the mix, but much of it was the vibrant, topical, and contemporary music of the people. It was only after the war, when the revolutionary generation and their children were dead and the Blues and Grays were getting on in years that we as a country decided that loving our nation meant venerating its past and ignoring its present.

As for Dixie, well that tacky old minstrel tune just refuses to stay dead, but when it gets stuck in my head, I like to think of the Northern version. It’s amazing.

Do they still do it in theatres in Ireland? I saw Oklahoma! at the Gaiety on my first ever night in Dublin, and was horrified when everyone stood for the national anthem (and then relieved when I realized it wasn’t God Save the Queen, so I could stand, thus not risking offending my hosts). That was April 1982.

JAFD@28: it has also been noticed that one can set words to the effect of “We are right, they are wrong” to many national anthems.
USA: We-e-e are ri-ight, the-e-ey are wrong, we are right, they are wrong, we are right they are wrong.
UK: We are right they are wrong, we are right they are wrong, we’re right they’re wrong.
France: We-e-e are right and they are wrong, we’re right and they are wrong.
Germany: We are right and they are wro-o-ong, we are right and they a-are wrong.
Don’t know if anyone can fit these words to “Advance, Australia fair”.

I guess I’ll argue with all of you. The issue really isn’t kneeling during the National Anthem-in spite of the fact that the football players do it, and in spite of the fact that Trump said it. And we all know it. The issue is that athletes are dictating to their customers how to vote. If you started a faculty meeting by telling everyone else how to vote in terms of abortion/gun control/the upcoming senatorial election/whatever, you would be in bad taste (I’d say you’d be fired, but academics are protected from being fired in a way the private sector isn’t). If you worked for private practice, and did the same thing (start a client meeting by telling the client to vote Republican. Start a meeting with the people who hired you to do web design that they need to vote against the Wall/etc/etc), you might well be fired-and you might well lose the contract, because the customer doesn’t agree with you. You don’t have the freedom of speech to tell other people how to value, or how to vote, or what political opinions to have, while on the job. That is a given that we all absolutely know. It also applies to millionaire professional athletes-if the customer wants to be lectured by his hired millionaire, he can. If he doesn’t, he can tell the hired gun to can it, or fire him. It appears that many NFL fans don’t want to hear it.

I disagree with most of you politically, and I am glad Trump is president. But really, if you are going to be academics*, and pretend to have a ‘broader’ view of the issues; why are none of you stating this? We all know this is what is going on. Its absolutely not a freedom of speech issue (as the Left says), and it is absolutely not a ‘disrespect to the flag/army/nation’ issue (as the Right says). The ‘National Anthem’ is just the kabuki theatre aspect of it. This is simply the athletic equivalent of ‘Shut up and sing!’ When I pay Greenday money to play guitar for me, I’m not paying them to hector me about global warming (even though they do-thus, I don’t pay them anymore). When I’m paying steroid addicts to run with a ball, I’m not paying them to tell me how to vote (even though now they do-I’ve never been a fan, but if I were, I’d stop).

anon

* lt’s fc t. cdmcs r nt ppl wh r wll rd ngh t ndrstnd sss bttr. Th r ppl wh r wll rd ngh t s bggr wrds t mk th sm shllw rgmnts tht dts mk.

As far as difficult-to-sing, quasi-obligatory songs go, the anthem is a walk in the park compared to the execrable “Happy Birthday to You.”

Fortunatly, that you have to stand up for national worship thing is typically not something one has to endure in Germany. When i learned about the pledge of alegiance at school during English lessons, my first thaught was “thats horrible”. My second was however, “youre going to a staate school and still you are basically forced to stand up and pray from a catholic prayer book every morning, that one would be an improvement”. But to be fair to German schools, that was rather untypical. When i switched school, the prayers were gone (even so i was still in an all catholic class (classes are usually seperated by relgigion due to the obligatory 2 hour a weak religious education).

@ Jim Harrison 09.26.17 at 4:00 pm

>Standing for the anthem or repeating the pledge of allegiance a pure gesture of loyalty. The meaning of the words don’t matter.

Well, it should. Saying (and doing) things as a mere gesture of loyalty without caring about their content is a terrible habit that has always had terrible effects.

>And I doubt if very many Frenchmen are all that bloodthirsty or still mad at Bouillé.

The ‘bloodthirsty’ lines of the Marseillaise express a commitment to freedom and readiness to fight those (foreign or co-citizens like Bouillé), who seek to deprive one of it; if many Frenchmen lack that commitment, that’s a problem with them, not with the idea that one should pay attention to the words of an anthem.

> Jerusalem is the de facto anthem of England, but the wild radicalism of its author is long forgotten.

It shouldn’t be forgotten. The basic ambition to build a new England far better than what it is in the present, as expressed in the text, is not only radical, but also perpetually relevant.

In general, while all anthems are doomed to be sung by rote, their words do have meaning and do matter.

@ Stephen 09.26.17 at 6:29 pm

>There’s the bit in the Marseillaise about impure blood (that is, English or German) flowing in the furrows of our fields. Any modern European speaking of the impure blood of other peoples might not be well received on CT or equally enlightened sites.

This is taking a quotation out of context to imply racism. Of course, the idea wasn’t that all representatives of the nations in the First Coalition as such were subhuman; the ‘impure blood’ line was conventional invective against perceived villains, in this case the enemy regimes and those fighting for them. Among the Revolution’s leaders, representatives and officers, there were Germans (Anacharsis Cloots, Nicolas Luckner) and Englishmen/Americans (Thomas Paine); the Revolution definitely wasn’t about blood-and-soil ethno-nationalism.

@ Fake Dave 09.27.17 at 12:16 pm

>It was only after the war, when the revolutionary generation and their children were dead and the Blues and Grays were getting on in years that we as a country decided that loving our nation meant venerating its past and ignoring its present.

Well, changing one’s anthem every few years or decades is hardly practical. Also, I don’t think that this kind of enshrining of specific historical moments/snapshots is necessarily a bad thing. After all, the basic devotion to values like freedom need not and arguably should not vary between nations; what varies and makes individual nations unique is precisely the concrete historical situations associated with that devotion. Something like that applies to individual humans – what makes us unique are our different specific memories, experiences and life histories, even if they are, ultimately, merely instantiations of the same basic, universal aspects of the human condition.

Trump has so far been quite successful in transferring his toxicity to everything he touches

Trump has so far been immensely successful in focusing people’s attention on trivialities. I sometimes wonder if it is plausible that this is all accidental, as after all the media go along with this very nicely. The Russia BS and all sorts of scandals like the anthem absurdity are just distractions from the fact that the Trump government is very successfull by its own standards.

I think that flags are good for easily identifiable short-hand labelling, as in here:

Surely we cannot let this moment pass without recalling Morporkia! Morporkia!,/i>, the national anthem that says out loud what other anthems are content only to imply:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAqCbOJc6RU&w=560&h=315%5D

I grew up in Australia and then moved to America and finished high school in St. Louis, MO. As a child I went to a Jewish day school (a specifically Zionist school in Melbourne) and I remember singing “Advance Australia Fair” and “Hatikva” (The Israeli national anthem) but I can’t remember if it was once a week at an assembly or once every term at a special assembly or what. It certainly wasn’t every day. When I was older I went to Melbourne Boys High School and we also sang the Australian anthem but I don’t think it was even once a week. In America I really don’t remember singing the American anthem at school ever. This was a public school, but a fairly liberal one in St. Louis County. We must have at some point but it wasn’t often. And I never saw anyone say the pledge of allegiance.

The biggest difference was with the anthem at sporting events. I used to go to a lot of AFL games (I was an Essendon junior member for years) and I never remember the anthem. The only time I definitely saw the anthem sung before an AFL game was at the Grand Final (the AFL’s superbowl).

Of course, they would play the anthem of each nation before international sporting events like at the cricket, international soccer games, rugby, etc. But I’m pretty sure it was just played over the speakers and it wasn’t some person singing the actual song like they do it in America. Maybe that’s changed now. Though I lived through the Howard years so I can’t imagine Australia has become more jingoistic than it was back then.

Maybe America needs to do what they do in a lot of Australian domestic sports leagues like the AFL and instead of the anthem play each of the team’s team song before and after the game. I used to love singing “See the Bombers Fly Up” at the start of the game and even harder when they would play it after the ‘Dons won.

My stepfather is American and a huge baseball fan so we would go to a lot of Cardinals games when I still lived at home or came home during college break (he has been a season ticket holder since like 1989). I haaaate “God bless America” and I got in to fights with people in the stands (just verbal, mostly. One time I had a “hold me back!” kind of altercation) because I refused to stand up. I stand for the anthem out of propriety, but not that song. Though I love standing to sing “take me out to the ball game” in the 7th inning. That song rules. “God bless America” feels on the wrong side of in your face jingoism like that horrible Lee Greenwood song. The fact it started to be sung at the baseball only after 9/11 reinforced my impression. As if the point was to implore god to actively take sides in a stupid war against goat herders in some impoverished country thousands of miles away.

“Well, none of the kneelers have said anything about how to vote. They’re protesting police misconduct.”

Of course not-you are being pedantic, and you and I (and everyone else) know it. I wrote ‘dictating to their customers how to vote’ as shorthand for ‘tell other people how to value, or how to vote, or what political opinions to have.’

“Perhaps some people walking past don’t like seeing signs telling them they should vote ‘Yes’. If they don’t, the remedy available to them is not to go into those shops. You probably have a valid objection to being required to do business with somebody who is presenting a political message you don’t like, but it’s not a problem if you’re not obliged to do business with them.”

Of course! You are agreeing with me! The football players don’t have a freedom of speech concern! The fans are not obliged to do business with them! The fans don’t like what they are doing, and are expressing themselves (Shut up and sing!)! If it upsets them enough, they will stop being fans!

I’m glad at least one person here gets it.

anon

Anonymousse #39: “The issue really isn’t kneeling during the National Anthem…”

You got this part right at least.

The current kerfluffle over U.S. televised sports looks like a classic case of moral compensation emerging from the subconscious, this time among Trump voters.

They (and you, apparently) have gravely dishonored their own country by electing a racism-whistling pussy-grabbing foul-mouthed weakling braggart. Even worse, all of the children took clear notice, poisoning the country for generations to come.

The realization of this moral horror has slowly begun to knock on the skulls of many Trump voters. It’s a dim, dull pain. It is growing within them like a malignancy. The discomfort was inevitable, and the acceleration of discomfort was predictable (and predicted) if Trump didn’t get anything real accomplished. If he had accomplished anything, they could have pointed to his accomplishments, to justify their bad judgment back on Election Day.

To be cured, the Trump voters would have to admit to their own culpability in the national embarrassment. Little chance of that! They haven’t even owned up to the fact that on the eve of the war, they were among those who were all-in-favor of invading Iraq.

Now instead, the Trump voters need somebody else to blame, to blame for something, almost anything. This is how it works: The individual psychological mechanism proceeds by deflection, by self-denial, by attempting to avoid embarrassment. But it would have to come at the social level, which is how this was reinforced at the outset. We see a sudden epidemic of psychological projection, of projecting one’s own immorality onto a kneeling athlete. Television handily makes it work.

Trump found them somebody to blame, found another issue for them to be angry and resentful about.

anonymousse

Of course! You are agreeing with me!

Not entirely, obviously, since I pointed out explicitly that your reference to ‘dictating’ was a shameless flagrant lie.

The fans don’t like what they are doing, and are expressing themselves (Shut up and sing!)! If it upsets them enough, they will stop being fans!

Oh, I do hope so. The more people who stop being football fans, the better.

Re anonymousse @ 09.27.17 at 6:50 pm, 09.28.17 at 5:53 pm

I have little sympathy for the ‘shut up and sing’ position as a principle – it is not inherently wrong to make a political statement while on the job: surely we can all imagine *some* evils of sufficient magnitude that they are worth protesting against even at the cost of annoying some of the customers. It’s a matter of judgement. This applies especially to professions such as singers, entertainers, writers etc., in which presenting one’s personality, feelings and thoughts is very much part of the job – which is exactly why ‘shut up and sing’ sounds like an oxymoron. The disemvowelled part of the comment, while perhaps somewhat impolitely worded, is the only part that I agree with in substance to some extent. Indeed, academics, and intellectuals in general, do not necessarily understand issues better, and their learning is often simply an additional weapon that they use in favour of the ‘team’ that they have joined for whatever reason – that applies not only to politics, but also to small-scale university intrigues and sometimes even to scholarly debates. Learning and intelligence are often merely valuable resources that one sells, or rather hires out, to the highest bidder; the more knowledgeable and talented one is, the higher the price one can get for lying. This is depressingly obvious even in non-political matters, but ideologically, it is perhaps easier for me to recognise than for others here, since academics and intellectuals are usually right-wing in my country (in contrast to the West, where it is mostly the Right that is motivated to focus on their flaws).

Mario @ 09.28.17 at 7:12 am:

>Trump has so far been immensely successful in focusing people’s attention on trivialities. I sometimes wonder if it is plausible that this is all accidental, as after all the media go along with this very nicely. The Russia BS and all sorts of scandals like the anthem absurdity are just distractions from the fact that the Trump government is very successful by its own standards.

This observation and the linked article are absolutely correct, and furthermore – yes, as you suggest, it takes two to tango. If the Democrat/liberal side and their media had wanted to focus on the real and practical harm that the Trump administration is quietly causing, they would have. From day 1, it was obvious that that wasn’t the front that they were interested in fighting on.

I am late to the party but re anonymousse @ 39: I will trade shutting down football players telling us how to vote for forbidding tycoons to fund political campaigns across the whole country while also running independent PACs that tell us how to vote.

“I am late to the party but re anonymousse @ 39: I will trade shutting down football players telling us how to vote for forbidding tycoons to fund political campaigns across the whole country while also running independent PACs that tell us how to vote.”

No deal. I’ll just do my part to defund the NFL. You’ll have to rewrite the first amendment yourself.

anon

I attended a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” by the Pacific Symphony and was flabbergasted when the audience rose for the “Hallelujah” chorus. Apparently this is the custom hereabouts; fortunately they didn’t sing along.

It’s also worth noting that a lot of the people who want the football stars to “shut up and sing” (wtf?) also want them to be role models for young people, encourage them to donate to charity, expect them to wear special uniforms on the execrable “salute to service” week, and support firing them if they do things in their private life (like beating up a girlfriend, or engaging in dog fighting) that have no direct bearing on their work performance. They also, hilariously, demand that football players turn up to press conferences and speak to the media (enforced speech! Leading to the “I’m just here so I don’t get fired” hilarity). So these players are forced to answer media questions about their attitude towards their game, their personal lives, and often politics; but if they voluntarily simply take a knee on a political issue, they should be sacked.

This has been episode 7345689 of why conservatives are hypocritical dipshits.

I’m not sure what the rule is, but national anthems are played before at least some football (American soccer) matches between countries – friendlies, World Cup qualifiers, and World Cup matches. It would be considered extremely disrespectful for players not to stand at this time. In some countries it is considered disrespectful if their players don’t sing their national anthem while it is being played.

@58

Thanks Ogden, I appreciate your skepticism. But Donald and Sandburg also believe it happened.

And knowing this doesn’t stop me from wanting every shrine to white supremacy taken down.

@61: “If the Democrat/liberal side and their media had wanted to focus on the real and practical harm that the Trump administration is quietly causing, they would have. From day 1, it was obvious that that wasn’t the front that they were interested in fighting on.”

If The New York Times and The Washington Post can be called “their media,” both papers have been regularly running articles on the under-the-radar damage being inflicted by the Trump Administration on the regulatory environment and the blatant sabotaging of the Affordable Care Act. The “Democratic/liberal side” just concluded a series of battles, from the grassroots up to Congress, in defense of that same ACA, battles that will no doubt have to be resumed next year. Up next is the colossal giveaway to the rich and corporate interests that the Administration is putting forward as “tax reform.”

why not at least make it so irrelevant, outdated or absurd that it’s impossible to take seriously? The same goes for God Save the Queen

GSTQ has some good bits though

O lord God arise,
Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall!
Confound their knavish tricks,
Confuse their politics,
On you our hopes we fix,
God save the Queen!

@engels 09.29.17 at 7:14 pm
>Confound their knavish tricks, | Confuse their politics

Exactly, that bit is my absolute favourite. The curse seems to work much of the time, too. I thought it was ‘Confound their politics, | Frustrate their knavish tricks’, though.

@JA 09.29.17 at 3:37 am

It isn’t surprising that such ‘Thai values’ and ‘mores’ tend to be maintained so strictly, given that many of them are enforced through egregious human rights violations, as seen in the case of the medieval royalty cult and the lèse-majesté laws in particular. People are given long prison sentences for tweets and Facebook posts ‘disrespecting’ the monarchy. It’s a disgrace that a regime that does things like this is considered a respectable member of the international community in the 21st century, but it seems that being seen as ‘exotic’ and ‘traditional’ helps regimes get away with an awful lot of things.

@Layman 09.29.17 at 5:37 am and @Suzanne 09.29.17 at 5:59 pm
>I read the linked article, and reviewed the list of claimed accomplishments for the Trump administration, and I recall ‘the Democratic/liberal side and their media’ focusing on every one of them.

I wouldn’t deny that these things have been reported and discussed as well, and I couldn’t claim that I have an accurate and balanced view of US media in general, but, FWIW, my impression is that the *relative* amount of attention devoted to them has been far from sufficient compared with the various distracting symbolic controversies/scandals, the Russia stuff etc. The linked article, too, confirms that ‘Regulatory policy does not make it into the press nearly as much’. Actually, I don’t think that even Trump-related posts and comments here on CT are an exception from this ratio. This seems like a good way to ‘honourably’ lose the battles in question.

>It seems odd to call announcements ‘accomplishments’

Many of the things mentioned in the article are executive orders, legislation etc. that are already signed and in force, certainly not just ‘announcements’.

@kidneystones 09.29.17 at 10:36 pm
> many paying to watch professional sports, including the NFL product pay, for a real or faux notion of American patriotism … The anthem is part of the show …

I don’t think it should be like this. The job of sportspeople is to play a sport, not to be actors and make a show of patriotism (and I doubt that many viewers pay primarily for the latter). Any part of the show that is external to the actual sport can only work as long as one believes it to be voluntary, sincere and non-scripted; to demand the opposite as a disappointed consumer is sort of sick, pathetic and schizophrenic: ‘I demand that you (continue) to lie to me! Fake an orgasm even though I know you’re faking it!’ Certainly, it does make sense that political statements should normally be excluded from a sports event, but what doesn’t make sense is to enforce and script some political statements and ban others.

F. Foundling. Thank you for the observations re: ‘what sport should be’ which, while clearly heartfelt, are most unlike your normally sharp assessments of what is, or may be. If it’s purity in sports your after that can only reliably be found with amateurs and the under-talented. You’ll be familiar I’m sure with https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2017/07/31/icarus-netflix-documentary-russian-doping-scandal/523785001/ I highly recommend the film if you haven’t seen it, not because it depicts Russia as the thug regime it very often is, but because of the extremely long shadow the doping scandal there casts upon professional sports of all kinds. Dope need not be involved. Here in Japan the venerable and honorable sport of sumo has been caught up in match-fixing scandals so frequently I stopped paying attention decades ago. I enjoy watching sports, but I keep the financial factor squarely in the frame whenever outcomes are the question. I hope you’ll forgive me for observing that your view of what professional sports should be strikes me as attractively antiquated, and even quaint. Offered as a fan, if it needs saying. And we should all retain such illusions.

Which leads to your second point re: the Dem response to DT. Layman is absolutely correct, if one searches Google on these topics we will not find the Dem response was silence. Many Dems do understand that the last two decades have been mixed to say the least, and are fully aware that they’ve been routed at the state and local level with predictable results. The problem Dems continue to face, however, is of a very different nature. Their ostensible allies in the media are interested in cash, not conscience. CNN is widely recognized as reliably anti-Trump and attracts a great deal of attention exploring scandals that range from the serious to the ‘Trump gets two-scoops of ice-cream while everyone else gets one’ variety.

Any serious discussion of Trump and the media cannot begin without reading the Harvard: https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/ which is far and away the most comprehensive study of Trump and the media. Whatever Dems are doing is lost almost entirely in the ‘Trump Russia – Melania’s heels’ coverage.
Read the ‘All Trump, All the Time’ section of the Shorenstein study:

“Trump’s first 100 days were a landmark.[14] On national television, Trump was the topic of 41 percent of all news stories—three times the usual amount.[15] It was also the case that Trump did most of the talking (see Figure 1). He was the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of his coverage. Members of the administration, including his press secretary, accounted for 11 percent of the sound bites. Other Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, accounted for 4 percent. Altogether, Republicans, inside and outside the administration, accounted for 80 percent of what newsmakers said about the Trump presidency. For their part, Democrats did not have a large voice in Trump’s coverage, accounting for only 6 percent of the sound bites. Participants in anti-Trump protests and demonstrations accounted for an additional 3 percent” (My italics)

The Shorenstein study confirms what Trump has known since day one – give the media a story that is a financial gold mine, provocative, and horrifies our secular priests and that’s all anyone is going to be talking about. Van Jones noted the phenomena early on arguing that the reality TV host had not entered the political arena, the reality TV host had pulled the political entirely into the realm of reality TV.

The Shorenstein study is essential and certainly puts Trump’s anthem remarks in perspective. His candidate was a corrupt member of the GOP Alabama establishment and was sure to lose. Trump had to support Strange over Moore because of his own contractual obligations as ostensible GOP head, knowing Strange couldn’t win (see byron york at RCP on the Alabama primary). The anthem remarks sucked pretty much all the oxygen out of the room (Trump SOP) and he seized control of another news cycle with the predictable ‘this time he’s finished’ response from people who’d cross the street rather than pass the time of day with anyone adorned in NFL fan kit. The OP gets this, I think, as do most of the comments.

It’s a scam within a smelly bouquet of scams, but with some delightful and evocative resonances.

@78: All sides? Or as “DT” would say, many sides? Colin Kaepernick has been run out of the NFL for initiating the protest. Careers in the NFL are mostly brief and the players’ union is a weak one. The owners are now taking pains to remind the players of these hard facts. Every player who takes a knee is putting a career already insecure at greater risk and that will be especially true going forward.

The latest Trump Tizzy was a bit of race-baiting initiated by “DT” in order to distract from his Administration’s latest failures, including the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico. Cynical? You don’t say.