Oh poor souls, how you've missed me!

I'm actually not going to write a blog post but wanted to give anyone who comes into contact with this blog a heads up about where you can find my writing. I am now a slave to the Cavalier Daily, writing in the opinion section. My column usually appears on Thursdays, so check it out.

O Say Can You See How Good Our National Anthem Is?

You know, it is difficult writing blog posts. For this reason, I write one about every ten days or so because if I'm going to write one, it will be long and detailed, thus requiring a lot of time. I just wanted to point that out if anyone has wondered why my posts are not daily or more frequent.

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In any case, I'm watching the Olympics right now and I just heard the American national anthem twice, first for Rebecca Soni's unexpected gold medal in the women's 200 meter breaststroke and then for Ryan Lochte's gold in the men's 200 meter backstroke. Hearing the song gave me subject matter for a blog post, specifically: why the "Star-Spangled Banner"is such a great national anthem and why it is ridiculous that some people actually want it to be some other song.

Let me set the scene: it's September 3, 1814 and Francis Scott Key, a Baltimore barrister, and an American agent John Skinner sail out to the HMS Tonnant at the edge of Baltimore Harbor to attempt to arrange a prisoner-exchange for Dr. William Beanes, a physician accused of aiding the arrest of British soldiers who was captured by British forces. However, due to the fact that Key and Skinner overheard war plans in their meeting with British admirals over Beanes' situation, in which they managed to secure his release, they were forced to stay on the British ships during the naval assault of Baltimore harbor, particularly Fort McHenry. Just twenty days prior to the Battle of Baltimore the capital city of Washington had been torched by the British, destroying the partially-completed U.S. Capitol and much of the Presidential Mansion (not yet known as the White House). In general, the Chesapeake campaign had been a success thus far for the British, having managed to defeat American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg which allowed them to capture Washington and burn it. The British intended to strike Baltimore next, the more important port city in the Chesapeake region.

At North Point on September 12, the British landed a force of 5,000 men commanded by General Robert Ross, intending to march on the city. They were met by militia under the command of Major General Samuel Smith less than two miles from the city. In the ensuing skirmish, Ross was killed, causing the British to retreat. Their next move would be determined by the outcome of the naval bombardment. Key and his fellow Americans watched from the sea as British vessels initially engaged Fort McHenry from closer range, only to then retreat out of range of the forts cannon, basically turning the "battle" into a one-sided shootout as the British ships of the line tore into the Fort from long distance, firing more than 1,500 cannonballs at it over the course of twenty-five hours. From Francis Scott Key's perspective, it looked bleak for the Americans. Once the shelling ended that night, he and his comrades could only wait to see what remained once the dawn hit. Today, in the American History Museum at the Smithsonian Institute, you can see the fifteen-star, fifteen-stripe flag that Key saw as the dawn came on September 14, proving that the Americans still held the fort as well as the city because "the flag was still there."

That's pretty fantastic. Quite a story. Apparently, there are a lot of people in this country that do not know the background of our anthem. Compared to most national anthems, the "Star-Spangled Banner" has so much more history and specific meaning to it. The only one that easily comes to mind with comparable history is France's "La Marseillaise," as it was composed early in the French Revolution, originally called the "War Song for the Army of the Rhine" when it was penned in 1792, somewhat similar in its military nomenclature to the original name of Key's piece, "Defence of Fort McHenry." In a nutshell, I feel the historical basis of this song makes it just so much more meaningful and symbolic as a national anthem that the thought of replacing something with such significance offends and distresses me. Would you honestly rather have a song based on a important historical moment in American history or one penned in order to sell, like Irving Berlin's "God Bless America"? I would much rather have one with attached meaning than one that sounds catchier.

However, the only thing "wrong" muscially with the "Star-Spangled Banner" is that it is kind of hard to sing. It covers a half-octave in its voice range which is pretty difficult to sing for the average person. Personally, I love singing it because it involves such range. However, the tune is catchy - it's based on an English drinking song - and short (at least the first verse is and that's all we ever sing), unless any popular singer is singing it to open any given championship game, which requires it to be doubled in length. So when people complain about the difficulty of its words and musical details, I try to explain just what they're singing about and tell them to sing it next time with that in mind. Trust me, it feels a lot better that way.

Generally, the most mentioned candidate to replace the national anthem is "God Bless America," Irving Berlin's amazingly catchy tune and lyrics that everyone loves. I mean, hell, I like it a lot. Aside from the obvious religious connotation, which I think might disqualify it as national anthem, it's a tremendous piece. I think one of the most emotional moments in the aftermath of 9/11 was the Irish Tenor's (Ronan Tynan) performance of the song prior to one of the World Series games. The guy is incredible and when he hits that final note on "home" an octave higher than the rest of the song, it gives me the goosebumps. So it is difficult to deny the legitimacy of the song's musicality. However, as I mentioned, it lacks the historical note of the "Star-Spangled Banner." Berlin wrote the piece originally for a revue he was creating while he served in the U.S. Army during the First World War. He decided to not use it for the revue, however, and it wasn't until his 1938 revision that sounds like the one we know and love did the song become well-known. Again, I'm not saying it's not a great song; I'm just saying it lacks the historical relevance and meaning of the "Star-Spangled Banner." There are other great songs, like "America the Beautiful," Woody Guthrie's "This is Land is Your Land," and others, but none have the relevance of our current national anthem.

Another complaint about the "Star-Spangled Banner" is that it is somewhat militaristic in nature, with lyrics like "bombs bursting in air," seemingly glorifying war...or something like that. I find this line of reasoning to be a bit overly pacifistic. This country was founded and achieved its independence through war. I'm not defending war as a modern tool of diplomacy, where it has been so horribly misused by, among others, the Bush administration; nevertheless, it is difficult to deny how much has been gained and achieved by this country through necessary wars. If you look at every war predating the Korean War, there is a sense of almost unquestionable legitimacy in the reasoning behind our coming to blows with other belligerents (except for those that spoke Spanish). The Revolution was to achieve independence from an unjust ruler; the War of 1812 was a response to the illegal impressment of American sailors by the British and the interference with our right to the free seas; the Civil War was fought to preserve the Union; the First World War was in response to the sinking of American ships and Woodrow Wilson's idealistic hope to make it the "war to end all wars"; and World War II was necessitated by the raid on Pearl Harbor and the actions of Adolf Hitler. Sure, the Mexican- and Spanish-American Wars were for Manifest Destiny and imperialistic designs in the Pacific (no matter how much praying McKinley did), respectively, but throughout our history, the United States has gained, preserved, and spread its freedoms through war. (For those trying to apply that last sentence to the Iraq War, there was no actual provocation there to necessitate war - Afghanistan, yes, Iraq, no.) I understand this line of reasoning but I'm very willing to refute it always, as I just have in this paragraph.

In fact, I find the anthem to not be so much militaristic as just very poetic, as Key sets the scene and uses it to engender emotion within the reader/singer. Interestingly, the final line of the anthem, "O'er the land of the free/and the home of the brave?" is in actuality a question, which would seem to run counter to any militaristic view you can take from the song because Key seems to question what he's just written. Of course, the way we sing it is not as a question, likely because of the nature of the tune and because the other three stanzas all end with an exclamation mark rather than a question mark, thus showing Key wanted to confirm what he's been saying previously. Yet I still think Key, as a lawyer and amateur poet, was more interested in filling himself and his fellow Americans with pride for the denial of Baltimore to the British, and not so much celebrating the bombs and rockets, but rather the fact that the Americans in Fort McHenry and Baltimore had held their ground against the British foe. Sure, the anthem is a sure-fire example of nationalism, but if it's the national anthem, can its overt patriotism really be a complaint? It's not like we're singing "Deutschland über alles" with a line saying that Germany stretches from the Meuse to the Neman (that is, from inside of France all the way to Lithuania).

I countered some of these attacks based on complaints mentioned on the National Anthem Project's Wikipedia page, as well as ones I've actually heard. And in closing, I want to say that I love our national anthem and I honestly get choked up by it a fair amount. I feel that so often during international events we hear other nations' national anthems and go unmoved, except for other impressive ones such as the previously mentioned "La Marseillaise" of France or Canada's "Oh, Canada." I think when foreigners hear our national anthem, it's obviously possible they may not understand the words but I am confident that they indeed feel the emotion of the song. The "Star-Spangled Banner" fits our nation perfectly, for its historical relevance and emotional impact. Now, if more than 40% of us actually knew all of the words...

The Hypocrisy of American Xenophobia

Today I was working out at the gym and took a peak into the running area to see what was going on in the world of baseball as July 31 is the trade deadline in Major League Baseball. Among other things I found out Manny Ramirez is headed west to wear Dodger blue. As I was turning to go back to my workout in the weights area, I glanced at the other television in the running area, which had Lou Dobbs' show on. Despite the fact the t.v. was muted, it wasn't hard to figure out what his stellar show was discussing: there was a picture of Barack Obama's face on a dollar bill. The question in the graphic below was "Does Barack Obama have the look of a president?" and also "How does he compare to the founding fathers?" I groaned in response to this because this has to be one of the most pointless and ridiculous things I've ever seen on any cable news channel - and I couldn't even hear the discourse and could recognize this. There was some commentary about if Obama looked impressive enough on a piece of money also scrolling along the bottom of the screen. They followed his image with Ben Franklin's on the $100 bill, leaving one to wonder why the hell they would question how presidential Obama looks by then showing a man who looked like this:


Granted, Benjamin Franklin was never President but still they sat there discussing how presidential Obama looks and then showed the image of an overweight womanizer from the 18th century. You figure it out because I can't.

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In actuality, the point of this post is not to blast cable television news for its plain ridiculousness but rather to attack racist xenophobes like Lou Dobbs for the utter hypocrisy of their opinions on the subject of immigration (edit: alright, Dobbs and others may not actually be racist - Dobbs is married to a Mexican-American - but my points are still valid). But if I haven't made it clear enough, cable TV news is terrible. Anyway, I decided to write this post because every time I see Lou Dobbs, I think of how ridiculous the stances are that he takes, along with many others, against immigration.

Throughout the history of the United States there has been a lot of xenophobia and hatred of immigrants in this country. Whether it was the dislike of the Scots and Scots-Irish in mid to late 18th century, imploring them to push west and settle on the edge of colonial territory; hate of Irishmen fleeing the potato blight in the 1840s because they were Catholic, continuing for the rest of the century, even as many fought to preserve the Union during the Civil War; hatred of Southern European immigrants at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century because they were poorer and less educated AND Catholic; or the increasing anger directed towards Latinos from anywhere south of the United States that has been building for the last couple decades, Americans just don't like people coming to this country who don't fit the predominant ethnic, religious, and social make-up of the status quo.

Now, why are Dobbsian folks and the Tom Tancredo's of the world upsettingly hypocritical? Because any American who hates on people who desire to come to this country to find a better life is ignoring both the origins and nature of this nation as well as the steadfast "American Dream" ideal that is so entrenched in the American psyche. These people support the legislation passed to build a 700-mile wall to protect a 2000-mile border with Mexico, that is, aside from purely idiotic (if you're going to build a wall, you should probably build it to go along the entire border), ideologically opposed to these American values.

Look at it like this: it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the United States is at its core a nation of immigrants. Unless you're a Native American, your ethnic background wasn't found in this hemisphere prior to 1492, and in this country, not really before 1607 (at least for Anglo-Saxons). Look through any phonebook page. Because I don't have one handy, I'll take a quick glance at my Facebook friends. Let's take the "A's": Adams - English, Albano - Italian, Altman - German, Amato - Italian, Andraos - Greek, Andresen - Scandanavian/Germanic, Arbogast - German, Ashworth - English. That's just some samples from the A last names among my friends but they make my point. All of these names are those of traditional immigrant groups in this country. You look at a person like Tom Tancredo, clearly of Italian descent, opposing legal forms of immigration for individuals wanting to come to this country when if such barriers had existed when his grandparents came to the United States, they would never have made it through Ellis Island and he'd be Tommaso Tancredo in Naples or Florence or somewhere today. I mean, how can you be of fairly recent (relatively speaking) immigrant descent and oppose legal immigration to this country unless you are a) a hypocrite and b) a heartless bastard who for some reason believes his ancestors deserved a shot at a better life in the United States but that some guy named Hector Alvarez and his family, of a similar education-level as Tancredo's grandparents likely were, don't deserve that same opportunity. There's no reasonable way to back this argument unless you are a xenophobe. None.

Unless they want to go Millard Fillmore and bring about the reincarnation of the Know-Nothing Party, there's no place for the Dobbsians in politics or society, with their their attacks on immigrants in this country. Sure, illegal immigration is not a good thing - it puts pressures on local government and services while provides opportunities for terrorists to get across our borders; but to oppose things like healthcare for human beings, even if they're here illegally, is just immoral and terrible. We could argue about these pressures all day, but at the heart of all this, though, is the violation of the main tenants of the American Dream that everyone acknowledges as one of the key draws of this country: denying people entrance to this country because they are Hispanic or whatever, even if they go through legit means to get here, runs counter to the idea that a) people can come to the United States to start a new and better life and b) can rise to the top of the heap through diligence and hard-work. One only has to look at many of the greatest industrialists and business magnates in the history of this nation to see how true this is. A good example of a) and b) is Andrew Carnegie, who was likely the second-richest man in history (accounting for inflation). He immigrated from Scotland with almost nothing and became one of the most important industrial magnates of all-time, and then one of the greatest philanthropists. Cornelius Vanderbilt is a good example of just b); he was of Dutch and English heritage, quit school at eleven, was running his own business by the age of sixteen, and eventually built an empire in the steamship industry, followed by a larger one in the railroad business. Most importantly, there are countless examples of just a) because so many people come to the United States and have better lives for it. How could anyone desire to challenge one of the very ideals this country has embraced for basically the entirety of its existence, the "American Dream," and along with it, long to prevent people from coming here to fulfill the smaller versions of that American Dream?

In the long run, the small-mindedness and xenophobia of people like Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo will mean very little. Immigration is a fact of life in this country and despite the opposition to it, Spanish will continue to become more and more important here. No me importa y no tengo miedo. While the language will become more important, only fanatical worry-warts truly believe it will ever supplant English as the principal national language. While I have no problem with efforts to stem illegal immigration, I find the hateful and incessant attacks on those who immigrate here, between hearing Lou Dobbs yell about it on television to hearing some guy on XBox Live telling a Spanish-speaker to "learn fucking English," terribly hypocritical and a sad rejection of the great multi-cultural history of our country. The United States did not acquire the nickname "the melting pot" by refusing to allow those who wanted a new and better life to immigrate here. To do so was and is a rejection of American ideals. We are a nation of immigrants - we should welcome the newest batches with open arms and acceptance. Our country can only improve if we embrace the remarkable diversity that exists here. It is my hope that some day TV pundits and the talking heads of talk-radio will discuss in positive tones the increasing diversity of our nation. Until that day, which will probably never come, I'll just sit back and enjoy the Dobbsian crowd continue to make fools of themselves with their xenophobic and hateful rhetoric and hope that few Americans can actually swallow the bile they spew out.