15 dangling clauses that seem more or less mix-and-match interchangeable (Oh, say! can you see/through the perilous fight/o'er the land of the free/by the dawn's early light ... ), all of it amounting to a single, convoluted question that is then ... not answered. The printed lyrics actually end in a question mark.So the double-Pulitzered Weingarten does the only thing he can: write a new National Anthem, setting the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to the tune of the William Tell Overture, and has Christine Lavin test out how it sounds. "If you're popped by a cop, then you get a trial/Army troops won't be cooped in your domicile" just may catch on.
Does the flag still wave? As yet undetermined! The answer doesn't arrive until the second stanza, which no one knows because it is mostly sung in creepy, hyper-patriotic gatherings of, say, ladies who are direct descendants of Cotton Mather, or during secret Masonic initiation rites involving men wearing aprons.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
YOU CAN SAY WHAT YOU MAY ABOUT ANYONE: Gene Weingarten complains that Our National Anthem is "a mess":
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