Lehe: Time to retire National Anthem

I’m an Eagle Scout. That tells two things about me: 1. I love the United States. 2. I have… I’m an Eagle Scout. That tells two things about me: 1. I love the United States. 2. I have ceremonially burned a flag. Flag-burning isn’t a requirement for an Eagle Scout, but if you stick around in Boy Scouts long enough you’ll end up in the elaborate ceremony we use to retire a worn-out flag. In contrast to protest burning, a proper flag-burning ceremony evinces total respect for the flag and what it represents. The flag is only burned when it gets soiled or torn, so the burning is an act of honor ‘mdash; a mercy killing. The flag wouldn’t want to go on living anymore in such a shameful state. It’s like when one samurai beheads his samurai friend after a ninja assassinates his friend’s lord. The ceremony is an essential, invisible watermark in the design of Old Glory. And now, just as we lovingly retire our beloved star-spangled banner when it completes its mission, it is time to cremate the song ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Irrelevance and impracticality has pummeled our current national anthem. ‘mdash; like a flag so badly torn you can’t count the stars, its broad stripes sun-bleached to cream and tangerine. To start with, seemingly nobody has any idea what the national anthem is talking about. Take the beginning: ‘Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?’ As a kid, I was confused about the plural subject of ‘were so gallantly streaming.’ This effect is compounded by how the melody obliterates any sign the fourth line is a question, and not just a dangling prepositional phrase. Now I know it’s the broad stripes and bright stars doing the streaming, but the stars and bars are twice removed by commas from the ‘were.’ So I always assumed it was the ramparts that were gallantly streaming. Vaguely aware that ramparts were something on the ground, I pictured them streaming with blood. While writing this column, I asked a room full of college kids what a rampart was. One self-proclaimed steadfast patriot said it was a ramp where you drove the ships up onto the land for repairs: ‘They had these horse trains that would haul the ship up there, rolling on big logs, so the engineers could fix the holes.’ Actually, a rampart is ‘a broad embankment raised as a fortification and usually surmounted by a parapet,’ as defined by Merriam-Webster. Many Americans are familiar with ramparts, especially Americans who live in St. Augustine, Fla. But for the millions who don’t reside in places known only for colonial battlements, a rampart is something sketched vaguely in the last gleaming of a smoky twilight. Also, the national anthem is sung in two octaves. That’s not right. It shouldn’t be the case that only a trained singer can hit all the notes in a country’s anthem without sounding like a pubescent male chain-smoker. Macy Gray got booed once for messing up the national anthem, and she had a No. 1 hit ‘mdash; I guess she tried to say, ‘rampart’ and choked! The whole idea of a national anthem is to pump up ‘The People’, but ‘The People’ can’t get too excited if they don’t know what they’re saying and can’t even hum the notes properly. In fact, it’s not surprising Americans are belligerent when the anthem’s only comprehensible and sing-along lines are about bombs exploding and rockets en route to splatter some Briton across ramparts like an undercooked meat pudding. Not much of a liberal myself, I’ve never been one to point to Canada for solutions to American problems. Yet I have to admit Canada’s anthem is way better than ours: ‘O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all thy sons command. With glowing hearts we see thee rise, The True North strong and free! From far and wide, O Canada, we stand on guard for thee. God keep our land glorious and free! O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.’ Every time I hear the Canadian anthem right after the American anthem, I feel the same inadequacy a lot of Canadians probably feel when they see their flag next to ours. This is obviously a detriment to our hockey teams, but also to our national pride. America could do much better, given that the melody ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ derived from an English drinking song. Since that fateful dawn when Francis Scott Key scribbled his rhymes, Americans have invented or improved almost every genre of modern music, especially if you count Puerto Rico. From gospel to jazz to blues to bluegrass to country to rock to hip-hop to salsa to indie, America has been at the top of the charts musically. We have awesome songs like ‘America the Beautiful’ that everyone already knows and sings. It won’t be easy to put down ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and to say goodbye to an old friend. Change can be scary. But fortunately, this is the land of the brave. E-mail Lewis at ljl10@pitt.edu.