"Livin' in the home of the brave...."

Alicia Keyes festoons the National Anthem with an additional line... and now we are livin' in the Super Bowl comments thread here at Althouse.

ADDED: Beyonce. She lip-synched at the Inauguration, and now she drew so much power to boost that performance that she wrecked the whole second half. At least she didn't wreck the whole second Obama term. I hope!

The notion that the National Anthem is too hard to sing, so it's better to lip-sync.

Argument replete with sympathy for Beyonce and video of bad singing by "seasoned professionals."

I completely disagree with this argument. It's the difficulty that makes the performance thrilling. It's the risk of failure that makes it daring. And by the way, it's a song about fighting a war, which is not a risk-free enterprise. No safety net there. It's not like these seasoned professionals are drafted to sing the old song. The fact that it's also an old drinking song — mentioned in the linked article — counts on the side of throwing caution to the wind and overcoming inhibitions and leaving the consequences — the shame — for the morrow.... in the land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

Beyoncé lip-synched.

Do you care? Is there some authenticity issue here that matters? If so, why?

(Yo Yo Ma bow-synched at the 2009 Inauguration.)

Video from the "Guns Across America" rally here in Madison, Wisconsin today.

Here's some edited video showing the crowd and the signs.



In the middle there is a prayer, and at the end is the national anthem. Once you get to the national anthem, it's all national anthem from there on. I decided not to edit that part down because you get a good view of the people who attended the rally and their attitude.

The prayer is quite interesting, including some discussion of what Jesus said to Peter after he cut off a man's ear. (Jesus didn't tell Peter to surrender his sword. He told him to "put it back in the holster." My Bible says "sheath," but Jesus wasn't speaking English.)

At 2:07, you see a sign that says "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun. Mao," held next to a second, matching sign that says — in between 2 peace signs — "Support and Defend the Constitution."

At 2:15, I'm talking to this man about his nice-looking but hard-to-stop-and-read sign:



He asks me if I recognize the face and (despite knowing I'm wrong) I guess Michael J. Fox. He lets me know it's Ayn Rand and I say I'll read it later (knowing I've got the still). It says: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

At 2:35, I talk to a counter-protester with a sign that says "Ban High Capacity Magazine Clips" and ask "What's a magazine clip?" She knew there was some question about that term, but she'd researched it on the internet and decided that was the term she wanted to use. Perhaps saying "magazine clip" is a way to signal which side you're on. A shibboleth.

ADDED: Other stills from the rally here.

It's not easy to be this bad.

An 11-year-old girl sings what some consider the worst version of the National Anthem ever (to an audience of 22,000). Here's the Christina Aguilera Super Bowl performance that really should never be imitated.

A new Obama ad and a new Romney ad.

I'm getting these via Paul Constant at Slog, who says this about the Obama ad:

Holy fucking shit. This is the most brutal attack ad I've seen in a long, long time. It minces the hell out of Romney's offshore fortunes and his record as a jobs exporter (in the private and public sectors). And it makes fun of Romney's singing voice, turning his version of "America, the Beautiful" into a symbol of his warped view of patriotism... This is just an incredible, devastating attack ad. I don't know if it's going to turn any hearts and minds to Obama, but it's going to sure as hell send the Romney campaign reeling. And the Obama campaign likes it when the Romney campaign is reeling.

And he says this about the Romney ad:

It's weak sauce. First of all, you can't argue against negative campaigning in a negative ad. Second, both Romney and Obama have both used negative ads before, so this is nothing new. What this ad is complaining about is that Obama's negative ads are working.

Here's the "brutal" Obama ad:



And here's the "weak sauce" Romney ad:



A few thoughts:

1. The Obama ad is nicely done artistically. It's different.

2. People generally experience Obama as more human than Romney. The new Obama ad undercuts efforts to portray Romney as plastic and robotic. Remember when Hillary Clinton got caught singing the National Anthem badly?



The impulse to use this clip to mock Hillary backfired. People tend to find sincere but bad singing endearing — and this can be especially good for a candidate who has been coming across as too controled. It's "a completely humanizing moment."

3. The Romney ad is much less striking. Unlike the Obama ad, it doesn't grab attention as a beautifully crafted short film. It looks do-it-yourself and webby. There's humility to it. Just wondering what happened to the hope, you know. It oddly resonates with the Obama ad that tries to humiliate Romney for singing badly. America is oriented — generally — toward liking Obama, the man. That's a mysterious process. Hard to see exactly why it happened and how it could be reversed. Obama is relying on it... and relying on the seeming impossibility that anyone could love Romney. The Romney ad very gently tries to undermine the love. He gave us hope. Where is the hope?

"Friends, Romans, countrymen..."

This amused me. Cowboy style. I ran across it because I was looking for the text to the famous Mark Antony speech, which I'd been forced to memorize in junior high school, many decades ago. (Here's Marlon Brando doing it, not amusingly.) And what got me testing my own memory was something I'd just read about Barack Obama, which someone had emailed me, a propos of the recent "born in Kenya" dustup. It's a GQ article from November 2009 called "Barack Obama's Work in Progress."

Over the past few years, we’ve gotten to know our president as a lot of different things: campaigner, lawyer, father, basketballer. But what if Obama’s first and truest calling—his desire to write—explains more about him than anything else? Robert Draper recounts the untold story of the first man since Teddy Roosevelt to serve as author in chief.

I haven't combed through that whole article looking for the Kenya connections, but I noticed this bit about Shakespeare:

Sometime in 2002, the young state senator pays a daytime visit to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The artistic director, Barbara Gaines, is happy to show the politician around. Watching the carpenters erect the set, he asks Gaines which play is about to be performed. “Julius Caesar,” she tells him.

At first, Obama doesn’t say anything. Then, in a very soft voice, he begins to recite some twenty lines from the play. As he does so, he places his hand on his heart, as if stricken by the words’ transcendent beauty.

The director is agog. She has never heard an elected official quote Shakespeare in such a way.

Now, wait a minute. Who, upon mention of "Julius Caesar," doesn't start going "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me you ears..."? If it was some other 20 lines from the play, I might be impressed. The fact that he went on for 20 lines is sort of cool as a demonstration of memory. It's more than I can do without missing some words, but then, I learned it during the LBJ administration. But who goes on for 20 lines, putting on a memory show? Maybe you would if you saw that you were getting the director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater agog.

And would you put your hand on your heart? (Cf., Obama not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem.)

Back to GQ:

Later, she tells a co-worker, “I just had the most amazing experience. I met the first politician to have the soul of a poet.” (The first, she means, since Abe Lincoln, who quoted lines from Macbeth less than a week before his assassination: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke…)

The soul of a poet. Doesn't anyone remember Eugene McCarthy?



Many women loved this Senator from Minnesota, who challenged LBJ in 1968, and the poetry was part of it. My maternal grandmother loved him because he was a poet. 1968 — there was a year. Bobby Kennedy pushes Senator McCarthy — the good Senator McCarthy — aside, LBJ declines to run, Martin Luther King is shot down, 2 months later Bobby follows him, and Nixon becomes inevitable.

By the way, speaking of MacBeth and LBJ, they made a play back then: MacBird!



The playwright, Barbara Garson said:

"People used to ask me then, 'Do you really think Johnson killed Kennedy?'... I never took that seriously. I used to say to people, 'If he did, it's the least of his crimes.' It was not what the play was about. The plot was a given."

Tax Day oratory.

If you're wondering how the crowd was harangued at the Tax Day rally here in Madison on Saturday, I haven't processed any good video clips from what we recorded. But others, with more stable and well-positioned equipment have. You can watch Vicki McKenna and Dana Loesch. And here's some singing from Krista Branch (of "I Am America" fame).

Here, Meade took this picture of Branch belting:



Here are some non-Tea Party guys mocking the National Anthem.

ADDED: Here's the video I took during the National Anthem. (You can see Meade at "rockets red glare.")

"An American state senator in Indiana has proposed a new law punishing anybody who changes the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Vaneta Becker wants to impose a fine of $25...  on singers who dare to improvise, extemporise or undermine the United States' national anthem."

I've never heard of this person before, but congratulations to Vaneta Becker for stepping into the limelight with such a ludicrously misguided attempt at upholding American values, which — hello?! — include free speech.

Can you think of any similar cases of American politicians stepping onto the public stage and immediately falling flat on their face?

By the way, would you slap a fine on these kids?



Clue to Becker: "The Star-Spangled Banner" is itself a re-write of another song.

When Mennonite pacifists meet "the stereotypical God-and-country Midwestern" patriots.

There's a current controversy about playing the nation anthem at Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana. There, the tradition was pacifist and the anthem was not played.

About a year and a half ago, some athletes approached the president, James E. Brenneman, to ask if the anthem could be played before some games. Dr. Brenneman, a former pastor who has led Goshen since 2006, said yes, “as an expression of welcome to the half of our student body who are part of other religious traditions,” he told [the NYT reporter]....

Dr. Brenneman stressed that even when the anthem was played, “it wasn’t like you would see at a pro football game or the World Series, with the F-16 fighters flying overhead.” The music was played, without anyone singing the lyrics over the public-address system, and the anthem was followed by the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. ...”). This was Goshen’s “way of saying, if we are going to do it, we won’t do it as they do it elsewhere,” Dr. Brenneman said....

In 2009, Goshen unveiled a marketing campaign called “Peace by Peace,” emphasizing its pacifist roots. “Not everyone was enamored of this marketing campaign,” Dr. Berry said. “That included some folks in the athletic department, and the reason was that for sports — soccer is a bit of a different animal, but for baseball, golf and particularly basketball — Goshen College recruits students who aren’t from a Mennonite or Anabaptist background. And they reflect a little more of the stereotypical God-and-country Midwestern approach to patriotism.”

Dr. Brenneman wished to “quibble” that the request to play the anthem “came in direct response to Peace by Peace.” And Dr. Berry acknowledged there was more at stake than athletes’ gripes. There is a theological question, “which was that if we talk so much about peace, that will make it hard to attract non-Mennonite students.”

“And if we can’t attract non-Mennonite students, are we being hospitable?” Dr. Berry said.

Hospitality is, like pacifism, a core Christian virtue, and some Mennonites believed that playing the anthem was justified to help students from other backgrounds feel welcome.

After a year of "really intense dialogue," the college adopted the policy of playing "America the Beautiful" before sporting events.

I love the emphasis on hospitality and conversation. Really beautiful. Thank you, Mennonites.

A grand performance of the national anthem in Madison... and a complaint about it.

Jessica Courtier in the Capitol Times, describing the program that opened the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s new season:

Forgoing the usual celebratory fanfare, the program opened with John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, a piece premiered a year after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Drawing its texts from the missing-person posters that populated New York immediately after the terror attacks, the piece is filled with recorded speaking voices and live singing....

The piece closed as it opened, with recordings of the most quotidian of street sounds, and the audience held a space of contemplative silence, as conductor John DeMain had requested before starting.

I’m going to say something here that will no doubt get me hot water: I am disappointed that, at this point in the concert, DeMain chose to insert a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

Where the Adams composition creates a space for personal reflection and tenderly holds the names of people who perished, the anthem demands a particular feeling. Surely the sense of nation was implied in the Adams piece and need not have been followed by sounds so linked to politics.

Meade and I attended last night's performance, and if the audience objected to the national anthem, you could not tell. Playing the anthem has been a tradition and omitting it because of the 9/11 remembrance is, presumably, even in Madison, almost unthinkable. And the orchestra, augmented by the choir, produced real thrills, especially when they hit the high note — with descant — on "free."

I find toast-botch too painful to mock.

What if you gave a toast and nobody raised their glass with you, because they were in the middle of a solemn ritual that you had thought was the solemn ritual that is your toast but was their national anthem and the elderly queen was queenly enough to say gently to you "that's very kind"? You would carefully place your glass on the table and stand stiffly like everyone else and hope that the wide frown on your face expressed not your nightmare experience but some simulacrum of the "national anthem face" you should have had there all along, when you were blabbing that Shakespeare — Shakespeare! — to try to butter them up about what a great country they think they have. Oh! The rigidity of this horror!

Did the anti-Tea Party protesters boo the national anthem at the Madison rally yesterday?

I'm seeing some assertions about this on blogs and in YouTube videos, and it's wrong if not unfair and deceptive. I don't have my own video, because I mishandled the button on my camera, but I was right behind the Tea Party crowd amid anti-Tea Party protesters who were making a lot of noise trying to drown out whatever was coming from the podium. They were, in fact, succeeding in their purpose so well that they could not hear when the national anthem began.

I started walking forward and it took a while for me to recognize the anthem. My observation was that those who could hear it were not booing. The "rockets red glare" line seemed louder, and there was a noticeable hushing that extended back into the anti-Tea Party areas of the crowd.

Meade and I have observed some of the most raucous rallies at the Capitol over the last 2 months, and the national anthem was sung many times, by the protesters themselves, and we witnessed respect for the anthem. In fact, you could go into the rotunda and start singing the anthem and people would go silent and even sing along with real feeling. They might have resented having to switch to solemnity when they were into raucousness, but they knew very well that they had to at least look like they respected the anthem.

Outdoors, yesterday, the acoustics were distorted, the anthem began unexpectedly, and the noisemakers were into their thing, drowning out the tea partiers. You cannot infer disrespect for the national anthem. But if you want to get back at people who are trying to drown you out, it's a good trick to start singing the anthem, while video-recording.... though maybe that's not properly respectful of the anthem.

A big mix of stuff from the protests today.

Meade shot, I edited:



0:00 — Meade acquires a flag
0:20 — "No snakes?... So service snakes are allowed?"
2:00 — The "Union/Power" chant ends and Meade starts the National Anthem
3:00 — Flash forward to a second Meade-led National Anthem that took place later in the day (with Meade appearing on screen)
3:15 — Back to the morning National Anthem
3:53 — A speaker wants to "Stop Scott Walker and his minions"
4:45 — A man in shorts holds a "yucky face" sign
5:04 — "They used duct tape"... "That was us."
5:38 — "Go Packers"
5:58 — Dog wearing a sign "I'm smarter than Scott Walker... and once I ran straight into a post"
6:17 — Meade encounters the one guy who might be with the Tea Party doing cleanup
6:48 — "I'll go see if I can shake things up"
6:50 — "Working people of the world revolt"
7:37 — "I just got drafted into the Army of Davids"
7:57 — The thing that Meade resents more than anything
9:21 — Meade disses MSM to a citizen of Wisconsin
10:43 — A child does what many children are doing when brought in by adults see the demonstration: gazes up into the dome
10:48 — George, the St. Bernard
11:13 — A protest song praising the fleebaggers for "sneaking 'cross the border." (Can you believe this guy is wearing a red sweatshirt with white letters that don't say "WISCONSIN" but "NEBRASKA"? Nebraska!)
12:36 — Criticizing Walker because "he's not really one of us"
13:19 — Palm tree!
13:31 — "Stop the Imperial Walker"
13:14 — Drummer boy

"On Wisconsin! On Wisconsin!/Champion of the Right!/'Forward!' our motto/God will give thee might!"

At the Capitol today, does anyone have a good voice? Can anyone get the national anthem started? And if everyone sings the national anthem, will anyone sing the state song?



There's some nice camaraderie in this video, a flashback to a slip-and-fall, and a discussion of the morality of capitalism. It begins with "Power to the Peaceful" and a man in the middle of leading a prayer for peace in all the countries in the world. He prayed for each, separately, by name, in alphabetical order, and — before that — for each of the states, by name, in alphabetical order. Edited down, appropriately, I hope, by me. Video by Meade.

(Presumably, now, anyone who ever wants to stand in the middle of the rotunda and lead a long prayer, will be completely free to do so.)

AND: The "he" that talked about commerce and morality was Gandhi.

A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda.

Today, Meade went back to the Capitol rotunda to see what things were like after the overnight-sleeping protesters had been cleared out pursuant to a state court order. It was easy to get into the building, and lots of protesters were back, chanting their usual chants. But one man — who did not agree with the protesters — decided he would occupy the central spot. To the consternation of the others, he invited people to come talk to him one-on-one.



There's reasonable dialogue along with unreasonable efforts to drown out that dialogue. A polite organizer asks the man to move out of the center of the rotunda, and he refuses. There's an almost perfectly beautiful interlude when everyone sings the national anthem. Nervous women air the notion that the man — and Meade — are Walker plants. The woman accusing Meade sticks her finger right into the camera lens. And then, somehow, Meade becomes human to her, and, as 2 young girls spot a friend on the balcony and run off, we have the feeling that maybe everything's going to be all right.

I started to imagine Wisconsinites coming back to the building every day, talking about everything, on and on, indefinitely into the future. That man who decided to hold dialogues in the center of the rotunda is a courageous man. But it isn't that hard to be as courageous as he was. In the long run, it's easier to do that than to spend your life intimidated and repressed. That man was showing us how to be free. He was there today, but you — and you and you! — could be there tomorrow, standing your ground, inviting people to talk to you, listening and going back and forth, for the sheer demonstration of the power of human dialogue and the preservation of freedom.

And you could start singing the National Anthem. If you go in, with no idea other than to sing the National Anthem, there's a good chance everyone will stop what they are yelling and chanting and sing along with you, because nobody wants to be seen not singing along with the National Anthem. Oh, except that one girl. But let's be charitable. She has a whole life inside her, and we don't know what it is.

Scenes from the demonstration at the Wisconsin State Capitol today.

Students, union members, and others protested the new governor's budget plan. I was working, but Meade went down and took a lot of video, which I've edited:



There's singing of the national anthem at the beginning and end of this video. In between, there's some chanting — "You know what's disgusting? Union busting!" — and "Don't Stop Believing" and drumming and so forth.

Homecoming Saturday.

The UW Marching Band began playing at 7 a.m. this morning. Insistent drumming and trumpeting permeates the neighborhood. I love the national anthem as much as anyone. No, I'm sure there are people who love it more than I do, but I love it appropriately well. Still, I don't want to hear it at 7:15 a.m. -- "by the dawn's early light," literally.

It's too cold for people to sit outside at State Street Brats.

But it was very pretty passing by just as the Backstreet Boys were singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to open the World Series.



Sorry for the wind (and bus) noise, but I love when you can hear girls exclaiming "Sounds like the Backstreet Boys," "Yeah, it is!"

ADDED: When I got home, I watched a bit of the game on HDTV, and I was shocked. Is it just the HD? The players look like hell! When did they stop wearing stockings and knickers? Those long pants look like pajamas. I remember tight pants. These are all baggy. What a bunch of slobs! And look at all that litter in the dugout. And all the nutshells in front of the dugout. Ugh! The aesthetics!

Live-blogging night 2 of the Republican Convention.

5:22 Central Time: Just setting up the post. Let's watch!

5:31: Ugh. CNN is still going over and over the hurricane. Would they be making so much of a hurricane of this dimension if it was the Democratic Convention?

5:32: I'll have to run off at some point to go to a hair appointment. Feel free to tell me how you think I should get my hair cut. Pictures especially appreciated.

5:49: The subject is whether Sarah Palin should stay home with her "special needs" child. Can you be a mother and pursue a career? Gloria Borger, a self-identified "working mom," says you can't make "generalizations," and everyone must make her own decision.

5:57: Wolf Blitzer is pushing the meme -- which I've heard elsewhere -- that McCain is a "maverick" and that means he makes impulsive decisions like the choice of Sarah Palin. He doesn't add -- but there are versions of this meme where it is added -- that this supposedly gut level choice of Sarah Palin should stand as a warning about the way he will make decisions about foreign policy.

6:38: Super-serious singing of the the national anthem, but I really don't like the singer's enunciation. Weird to have the flag waving on a digital screen.

8:22: I'm back. Hair cut. Just scrolled through all the stuff I missed, and it seems like virtually nothing.

8:43: Very moving presentation of the story of a Medal of Honor winner, Michael Monsoor. I see from the NYT that Senator Lieberman spoke, but I didn't see that in my scroll-through, so I didn't mean to count that as "virtually nothing." What I saw was a lot of Blitzer et al. commentary. [ADDED: No, that was just a preview. I didn't miss it.]

8:53: It's Laura Bush, extolling her husband as a man of principle and resolve. She praises his achievements: the appointment of women and 2 new Supreme Court Justices, the faith based initiative, the fight against AIDS -- "you might call that change you can really believe in" -- "and let's not forget, President Bush has kept the American people safe." Will Laura's husband ever be honored? Does she believe he will? She introduces him.

8:56: And here he is, on the video screen. "I know the hard choices that fall solely to a President. John McCain's life has prepared him to make those choices. He is ready to lead this nation."

9:09: A film clip about Reagan. In the car, I heard the film clip about Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Convention, much more than the Democratic Convention, highlights the heroic individual. This fits the party's ideology. John McCain was "a foot soldier" in "the Reagan Revolution." Reagan "broke the self-confidence of the Evil Empire of Communism." And he had Nancy. He put "country first." ("Country First" is the new McCain campaign slogan.)

9:14: And now: Fred Thompson. Ah! He springs to the defense of Sarah Palin. "I say give me a tough Alaskan Governor who's taken on the political establishment of the largest state in the Union and won over the Beltway 'business as usual' crowd any day of the week!"

9:18: Fred says Sarah has got the other side "in a state of panic." And she knows "how to field dress a moose." Now, he's telling the story of John McCain's life, "putting his country first." He's putting a lot of passion into the delivery. The harrowing story of McCain's imprisonment. "We hear a lot of talk about hope these days. John McCain knows about hope. That's all he had."

9:29: Remember. After the comments go over 200, you need to click on "post a comment" and then "newer" to keep the conversation going. I know a lot of you know how to do that.

9:35: "The respect [John McCain] is given around the world is not because of a teleprompter speech designed to appeal to America's critics abroad... *ahem*.... no, it's not that."

9:38: Obama is "history-making" all right: he's the most inexperienced, left-wing candidate the Democrats have ever run -- says Thompson.

9:52: The CNN commentary is insufferable. After Thompson, they all just kept saying "red meat."

9:55: It's Joe Lieberman. I kind of love this guy. I voted for him one time. Man, he is a boring speaker though. I can't imagine him as the VP candidate. Palin is a much better speaker.

9:59: "I'm here to support John McCain because country matters more than party."

10:05: "Eloquence is no substitute for a record," Lieberman says of Obama. Now, he compares Obama to Bill Clinton. Clinton stood up to interest groups and worked with Republicans for major achievements. [ADDED: He was saying Clinton was better than Obama: "In the Senate [Obama] has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. Contrast that to John McCain’s record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget."]

10:07: Sarah Palin is a "great lady."

10:12: He's warming up. Maybe it's not so boring now. "These are not ordinary times and John McCain is no ordinary candidate." He says what he thinks is right... ah... too much repetition. John McCain has character and experience....

10:17: After-speech commentary. Donna Brazile is talking fast but stumbles in a way -- "Look, Joe... Lieberman is a man... " -- "speaking at this conviction, this convention" -- that makes me feel sure she's reading from a teleprompter.

10:21: David Gergen thinks Lieberman has "extremely annoyed" some Democrats by not only supporting his old friend McCain but also really going after Obama "in a very personal way."

10:43: That's it for me. A decent convention night. The highlight was Fred Thompson's dramatization of McCain's Vietnam experience. Or was it Joe Lieberman telling everyone we should vote against his party?