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Happy New Year, everyone. Nothing like kicking off 2012 by bringing you this example of “small government” Republican legislation, delivered by Indiana State Senator Vaneta Becker (R-Evansville), She apparently has considered all of the problems in the state solved, all potholes taken care of, all needs addressed in the state budget, etc., because anyone with synapses firing wouldn’t waste taxpayer time for such a mind-numbingly stupid effort:
Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, has introduced a bill that would set specific “performance standards” for singing and playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at any event sponsored by public schools and state universities.
The law also would cover private schools receiving state or local scholarship funds, including vouchers.
Performers would have to sign a contract agreeing to follow the guidelines. Musicians — whether amateur or professional — would be fined $25 if it were deemed they failed to meet the appropriate standards.
…What is and what is not “acceptable,” according to Becker’s bill, would be determined by the State Department of Education, with input from the Commission for Higher Education.
Becker said she would expect the guidelines to require that the national anthem be sung with the usual lyrics to the traditional melody — “the way that we normally have it sung or heard throughout most of our state and our country.”
I’m pretty sure that this would no longer make the grade if this bill passes.
33 Comments
Can someone please show a copy of the 1st Amendment to Senator Becker?
Why do conservatives always seem to think that in order to be elected they have to prove that they hate America for our freedoms? Granted that’s what the rabid ignorant base wants, but that’s a minority on the fringe.
Many many years ago Dick Cavett asked Jimi Hendrix if he thought his version of the Star Spangled Banner was appropriate. Jimi Hendrix said “Man I think it’s beautiful”. I think Jimi’s right.
ffs
these people turn me away from our flag and our anthem and the other symbols of patriotism.
Happy New Year Pam & Co
This is predictable bullshit nationalist “legislation” from a Red State Republican designed to build an image with certain voters. It would obviously never be passed into law, or signed, or if it was, it would be abruptly declared unconstitutional by courts upon challenge.
Some Democrats do this too, pitching red meat legislation they have no intention of getting behind and do not ever think would pass just to shore up their images with us.
I think it’s appropriate to the new Fascism. Frau Becker should be rewarded and her husband released.
Vaneta should never have been allowed out of her cave. This is the most absurd thing to date. I’m delighted to know that Indiana has so few problems that they can dwell on singing. Grinding my teeth.
I blame the Dim-0-craps for this bullshit – I don’t blaming drooling, lying fascist fucks for being drooling, lying fascist fucks.
I’m 51 – I was 4 buck an hour cook in 1980 when I was 20, I had grown up on welfare and I had a mountain of student loans for a piece of poli sci degree … which wasn’t marketable back then, just like now.
I KNEW Ronnie RayGun was a lying stealing fascist lackey.
We’re into our 4th decade, at least, of a Dim-0-crap party run by the diaper pissers, for the diaper pissers, of the diaper pissers.
We seem to have an infinite supply of aspirants to Teddy White’s job, and we got almost nobody who make anything run right – anything like … a hot dog stand … a health care system … effective messaging against lying, drooling flat earth fucks.
I got NO problem with people who excel at some task making more than people who don’t excel – either pay them up front, or, there will be a black market & corruption. HOWEVER, you gotta excel at making stuff run right –
Our Dim-0-Crap “Leaders” excel at being successful at the Kennedy School Of Government, College of Upper Middle Cla$$ Diaper Pissing Dilettantes – unless they’re at the College of DLC Third Way New Dem Yuppie Sell Out Scum.
Imagine an EFFECTIVE Democratic Party, fighting for the bottom 90%+?
Idiots like this would drawing their audiences out at the BumbleBee Fair, next to the tables selling Mein Kampf and the bags of emergency dehydrated water.
rmm.
LOL. The idea of dehydrated water is hilarious.
Are we going to have a new government agency to police this endemic problem? Call it the National Anthem Bureau of Investigation, the NABI for short?
I can see swat teams from the NABI raiding high school football games all across the country every Friday night, with jackets with large block letters on the back, saying NABI. Of course they will be equipped with pepper spray, tear gas and heavy weapons to make sure some singer doesn’t injure themselves while being arrested. Then of course the teachers and principles will be charged as accessories and dragged away.
What a country!
I finally realized what’s been missing from all these Republican debates, the attendees up on stage opening their act by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” together, hand over their hearts (or where their heart would be if they had one).
I mean, the debates are the Republican equivalent of a beauty contest. We’ve seen them strut their stuff on stage, but can they carry a tune? Where’s the talent part of this contest? We’ve seen all their racism and homophobia on display, and heard about all the serial adultery and Mormon Mayan-deity worshiping of participants, but I want to hear them all sing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and to do so without a teleprompter, like they’re all at the ballpark. And Sen. Vaneta Becker (R-Evansville) can sit with other American Idol judges and decide if the Republican singers sang the national anthem according to her standards, and any failing to live up to her high standards, stumbling over the lyrics, should be yanked from the stage with the Gong Show hook.
Stravinsky was famously threatened with a $100 fine in Boston for adding a maj7 chord during WWII.
http://bostonlookingbackward.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/igor-stravinsky-the-star-spangled-banner-and-the-boston-police/
Mmmm…the tune we all know traditionally as “The Star Spangled Banner” was stolen from the Anacreonic Society, a gentlemen’s club. It was titlrd “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and was a drinking song. Find it here http://www.contemplator.com/america/anacreon.html
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A pirated plutocrats’ drinking song re-scripted by a lawyer and handed to the masses as a patriotic anthem. How fitting a metaphor for our age.
I thought of selling them for Y2K … THE PROBLEM for me was that, if I figured out decent marketing blah blah blah and had some success, then toooooo many of the customers would the hapless and the clueless who’d be better off wasting their pennies on the lottery instead of another internet … product.
rmm.
EPIC rant! WELL DONE! And for the record, I think your observations are spot on.
More evidence that government is not too big…it’s thinking is much too small. Such small thinking preclues the ability to be inclusive. I fear that any antidote or cure for this malady may be worse than the disease. Just like Eric Cantor is a cure for moderate republicans.
Jose Feliciano’s profound rendition of TS-sB, rendered before Game 5 of the 1968 World Series was the changing point for how performance practice at public events of the national anthem evolved. Here it is. Hendrix’ Woodstock performance was almost a year later, though he did perform it a few times before Woodstock, perhaps earlier than Feliciano. This was all at the height of weekly casualty figures for Americans in the Vietnam War.
Though Feliciano’s music, which was doing quite well in ’68, was banned at many radio stations after his performance, he remained proud, as did Hendrix of his having participated in breaking the ground on this piece.
Marvin Gaye sang the anthem at Game 4 of the ’68 Series, two days earlier than Feliciano. Compared to Feliciano’s, it was very straightforward. Nobody whined.
Gaye sang the anthem often. His interpretations evolved. My favorite among those I’ve heard or seen was from the 1979 Holmes-Shaver fight. His 1983 NBA all-star game performance is far more well-known, but the boxing version is elegant.
Stravinsky’s version, compared to other iconoclastic renditions, has always struck me as quite mellow. I think the Boston cops didn’t like a foreigner fucking with our song.
Regarding Gaye’s three performances linked to above, who is going to decide which was “appropriate,” which “unpatriotic”? No doubt Sen. Becker would feel more comfortable with a White Xian being the judge of taste in this important cultural matter.
I wonder if she knows about beloved American composer Charles Ives’s “Variations on America”. First composed in the late 19th century, it still gets played in orchestrated versions as well as in the original pipe organ form.
Virgil Fox on pipe organ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNpJJLNI6xg
A recent version orchestrated for wind ensemble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lrpseq4W4Q
with a czar?
If such a law lead to Christina Aguilera never singing the national anthem again, I could probably support it.
This will surely encourage creative (and far-out) interpretations of the anthem; well-recorded and documented, so that when charged with the offense, it will be on YouTube for all to enjoy.
The twentyfive buck$? Totally worth it!
I have a can of dehydrated water…
If someone already said this and I missed it…or it was too subtle…let me just call it what I see this as (besides the stupidity of trying to make a law about it).
It is pure out and out racism. It’s another manifestation of white folks seeing the “minorities” turning into majorities and being afraid.
I’ve heard my mother (now 93) and people of her generation complaining about “unusual” renditions of the national anthem for years; any time it’s sung by a black person any way but absolutely straight.
Yes, they have conservative views about sticking to the script, or the music as written, etc., but somehow, it never calls forth vocal complaints until they hear a black singer singing the anthem.
It’s of a piece with “I shouldn’t have to dial 1 for English”, etc., etc. It’s so common within their group they kinda spit it out by rote at the cue.
In a way, I wasn’t that surprised to read about this…it was just a matter of time, I guess.
People like their old English drinking tunes played straight. I have been part of the premieres of two unconventional arrangements of the national anthem. One was for double SATB choirs, with some sections performed in canonic imitation. It was not well-received by the audience, although the arrangement and performance were both excellent.
The second is a setting for wind ensemble. It was much tamer, but had a jazz-inflected fanfare introduction and some rather jazz-flavored harmonies in the bridge. We got more letters about that than we had in the previous two seasons. We went back to the stock Robert Russel Bennett version.
Don’t please get me started on what a sucky national anthem we have. The tune is not singable by untrained voices, the key has to be chosen carefully for trained voices. The source of the tune is an old English drinking song — apparently it helps to be drunk if you have to sing the thing. The poetry stops just short of going over the doggerel cliff. It also commemorates a war that we (in reality) lost.
We have all manner of perfectly lovely patriotic songs that are much more fitting national anthems. God Bless America is a bit too jingoistic and exclusionary for me. America shares its tune with God Save the Queen (I guess one of these days that will switch back to King), and so is probably unacceptable to the American-flag-on-my-lapel crowd. But how about America, the Beautiful? Good tune, decent poetry, doesn’t commemorate any particular war.
The 83 performance is probably more famous because he used the beat from “Sexual Healing”.
While I am a fan of Rosanne Barr, I wouldn’t have any problem fining her for her performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls1YVhcLD2c There are laws about how to handle the flag, there is nothing inherently crazy about laws for how to sing the National Anthem.
As for what standard to use in drafting such a law, the most natural thing would just be to appeal to existing copyright law for music which refers to “phrasing and approximate pitch”.
Truth be told, it is far far far less idiotic than the vast majority of laws that get passed these days.
As for Boston, I have no idea what the cops were thinking.
Not only do you have to sing it the “right” way, but you have to listen to it the “right” way. The HuffPo article about this I read yesterday cited the Federal Law about the National Anthem, which appears to have been passed or revised in January 2011. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/36/301.html
Hands over heart everyone! This type of mandated group obedience and nationalistic fervor makes me very nervous.
The code has been revised since first introduced but it was actually first put into law in 1942 (aka during WWII, unsurprisingly).
Prior to this the Flag Code (not yet law) required the Bellamy salute. It was changed to hand over heart and made law at least partly because people felt the Bellamy salute looked too similar to the Nazi salute.
I believe the more recent changes have simply been to allow out of uniform military personnel and veterans to use the military salute.
At least Congress knew that the most it could do for non-active duty military is suggest how people “should” comport themselves. All they can do is make suggestions, in other words. Anything more is a breach of free speech rights.
Congress has a notoriously poor record of understanding the constitutional limitations on its power, which is why Marbury v. Madison is probably the most important Supreme Court decision in our history.
This is not to say that the Supreme Court has covered itself in glory. Citizens United is merely the latest in a string of poorly reasoned decisions that probably predate Dred Scott.
I would have had a problem with fining Rosanne Barr. Then again, I’m one of those weird left-wing types who doesn’t think that the First Amendment only applies to speech I approve of (or that it has a few dozen unwritten exceptions).
It’s amazing how Roseanne Barr managed to get all the little fascists to come out from under their rocks and demand punishment because of a song.