National Anthem Etiquette

Twitter, October 18, 2017

The New York Times, August 5, 1933

"It was the old old story of the sacrificial lamb."

Channel 13 in New York broadcast Judgment at Nuremberg on Saturday night. The following scene with Burt Lancaster as German judge Ernst Janning stuck out to me as having some contemporary significance, so I'll simply share it without further commentary.

Maybe the Trump Inauguration Committee can get these singers

It's no secret that the Trump Presidential Inauguration Committee is having trouble finding performers to play at their January 20th festivities, but maybe -- if they make up for the fact that the campaign stiffed them back in January -- they can still get the USA Freedom Kids to perform.

Stand for the National Anthem

I don't know why this has become controversial.

If you don't love Donald Trump's dancing and lip-syncing 'Freedom Girls,' then move back to Iran, you Commie!

This happened yesterday in Pensacola, Florida, and reminded me immediately of the Buzz Windrip campaign described by Sinclair Lewis in 1935:

Happy Psychedelic Fourth of July from the US Information Agency (1975)

Isn't Pride One of the Seven Deadly Sins?

Here's a headline in the Washington Post that hits home for someone who's been calling himself and his blog "True Blue Liberal" for the past ten years: "Proud to be an American? You’re probably not a true liberal."  
According to the Political Typology report of the Pew Research Center, only 40% of  "Solid Liberals" consider themselves "Often Proud to Be An American."

(Days like today show why we liberals often find it hard wrap ourselves in red white 'n' blue, crank up the Lee Greenwood, and exercise the cardinal sin of  pride.)

Fireworks on the Fourth

I have a question about fireworks for tomorrow's national holiday. What is the very best way to honor our nation, our independence, and the primacy of the Stars'n'Stripes, symbol of our exceptionally exceptional nation?

Traditionally we celebrate by running a gasoline-soaked Union Jack up the flagpole in our backyard and set it alight as we play God Save the Queen (Sex Pistols version) with our beat-up Stratocasters and vintage Marshall amps.

However, this year I'm debating whether or not we should shake up our stale family traditions a little bit by changing the flag at the center of our fireworks.



My grandparents changed it up when they burned German and Japanese flags in alternating years between 1941 and 1945. I'm thinking that the appropriate vexicological sacrifice at the top of our pole this year should be the Yellow Snake Teabag Flag (sometimes known as "The Gadsden").


The musical accompaniment will again come from the classic Sex Pistols songbook of course, but tomorrow we'll play Pretty Vacant.

Hey John, Where's Your Obligatory Flag Jewelry?

Did you get dressed in the dark?  Or in the bathroom of the bar around the corner?

If either President Obama or Vice President Biden had arrived at tonight's State of the Union speech without the mandatory Stars'n'Stripes jewelry on the lapels of their dark suits, the Right would be screaming with outrage and asking for longer form birth certificates to prove our President wasn't actually born in Kenya.
But a right-winger like Speaker John Boehner can appear with no patriotic hardware on his lapel because no one on the Left gives a fuck.  But I figured I'd post this picture from a few minutes ago and mention it anyway, just because of the hypocrisy of the thing.

. . . an alternate path toward the extinction of suvs? casting them as anti-american?

So now, according to today's Washington Post article, "An Unlikely Meeting Of the Minds ", it's patriotism that's going to give us fuel-efficient vehicles. Even diminutive right-wing nutjob Gary Bauer has signed on to this new effort! While yesterday I wrote that only ridicule could kill the SUV (rhymes with glove), today it seems like this coalition of strange bedfellows may be pointing to another form of death for those dinosaurs:

"While skeptical about links between autos and global warming, the conservatives have concluded that cutting gasoline consumption is a matter of national security [. . . ]Last week a survey sponsored by the nonpartisan Civil Society Institute in Boston found that two-thirds of Americans feel it is "patriotic" to buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle."

And of course the only way to sell anything in today's U. S. of A. is to wrap it in a flag.

True Blue Liberal