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Until Don Cherry spoke up, all the right-wing weirdos in Canada hardly knew what to think about this national anthem thing, what with those Tenors guys muckin’ up the words to O Canada at a ball game Tuesday night in San Diego.
I took it that t the Tenors got the words to the Star Spangled Banner right, and sang it in English not Spanish as George W. Bush prescribed, because there were no reports of opposing groups of Anglophones and Hispanophones marching outside the stadium hurling insults and national hymns at one another and rightfully bearing their constitutionally protected assault rifles.
Nope, that’s next week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, and if you were thinking of catching a ball game in the onetime Plum City, I’d advise against it, although not just because of Donald Trump and all the rifles. See, Cleveland’s American League ball team, which I’m just not going to name here, is on the road next week. If anyone else can think of a reason to visit Cleveland, that’s what the comments section is for.
Anyway, I have been sternly informed by my editor at rabble.ca that someone else sang the Star Spangled Banner, and they must have got it right.
Normally, talk of changing the words of the national anthem gets the right wing here in Canada worked into a full-blown swivet. They were almost weeping with rage on the Conservative side of the House of Commons at the thought of changing “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command.”
And don’t even get them going by about taking God out of that song! After all, He was put there by our forefathers back in … um … well, 1980, actually.
Plus, I’m sure almost everyone here has seen that angry Facebook post from one of our weird right-wing shirttail relatives complaining about the Vancouver school board (or maybe it was the Toronto school board) letting school kids sing the song in an unofficial Canadian language. The anonymous author is generally seething with fury that it’s not even an exact translation!
I always write right back to say, ummm … do you know what the French version says? “As is thy arm ready to wield the sword, so also is it ready to carry the cross.” Seriously, people? Those who understand French isn’t a foreign language in this country usually unfriend me soon after that, which actually kinda works for me.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the Canadian right-wing weirdo’s national anthem dilemma. After all, that all lives matter thing that Boston-born, Ottawa-raised quartet member Remigio Pereira stuck in there unannounced is a right-wing meme, a sly way of saying something quite the opposite from what you appear to be saying. It is not at all clear, however, that Pereira understood this, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Just the same, it’s the sort of thing Canadian right-wing weirdos are prone to mutter when they perceive, you know, political correctness, which appears to be the terminology normally used on the right in this country to describe anyone who disapproves of overtly racist, sexist or otherwise offensive language.
But changing the words of the national anthem — ever, for any reason, except maybe to honour Ayn Rand or property rights — usually gets their shorts in a twist.
Thanks to Cherry, who is Canada’s best-known right-wing weirdo, though, the dilemma has been solved for them.
He’s simply shuffled the blame over to the left-wing weirdos and told them to shut up, as the right usually does. You know, like blaming the NDP for Tory policies cooked in the 44 years those guys ran Alberta like it was their private club. Happens all the time! Either that, or maybe he just thought a tenor was a purple bill that may soon have a portrait he disapproves of on it.
Whatever. The Tenors are a Canadian group, and we Canadians have been talking about changing the words to O Canada. So a little experimentation may have been in order.
However, if they were going to fool around with the national anthem, they really ought to have done it at home, where a knowledgeable crowd could have given appropriate feedback immediately from the cheap seats.
It would have been rude, of course, seeing as three quarters of them aren’t American born, for the Tenors to fool around with the Star Spangled Banner on either side of the longest undefended border in the world — undefended, that is, until Trump becomes president and we make them build that wall, as well as pay for it.
Still, it’s my opinion that the Star Spangled Banner could stand a little Canadianization — more true patriot love and fewer bombs bursting in air. Anyway, I like the Anacreontic version of that song, especially the part that goes, “And, besides I’ll instruct you, like me, to intwine, the Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine!”
I’m just saying this as a good neighbour. It’s something our American cousins can think about, and the Canadian Tenors, too, if they like. After all, they’re going to be back on stage in California at the end of the month!
Meanwhile, though, can someone please do something about Cherry’s suits? I mean, seriously, he’s practically desecrating the flag!
This article has been corrected after a very stern rabble.ca editor noted that the Tenors, thankfully, did not sing the Star Spangled Banner at the MLB All-Star Game. American singer Rachel Platten performed that function. rabble.ca regrets having to chastise Mr. Climenhaga.
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, AlbertaPolitics.ca.
Photo: Dave O/Wikimedia Commons
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