Speaker 1: The l A Times just ran a long piece by
Speaker 1: Jody Rosen calling for a new national anthem. Now. He
Speaker 1: notes at last month San Francisco protesters pulled down the
Speaker 1: statue Francis Scott Key in Golden Gate Park. Scott Key
Speaker 1: wrote the words to the Star Spangled Banner that the
Speaker 1: left now calls racist. Besides, very few singers can do
Speaker 1: justice to that difficult too, and it's a British melody anyway,
Speaker 1: so the anthem has to go. Now what should replace it? Well?
Speaker 1: Mr Rosen claims that songs like lift Every Voice and
Speaker 1: Sing and America the Beautiful out of step with the
Speaker 1: twenty one century this Land is Your Land. That doesn't
Speaker 1: cut it either, Rosen says, because it insults indigenous Americans,
Speaker 1: even though it was written by Woody Guthrie, a big
Speaker 1: loony lefty imagine by John Lennon. That's another British song
Speaker 1: with drippy utopianism. Plus Lennon was super rich. So nobody
Speaker 1: buys his day dream of a world with no possessions
Speaker 1: because he would never get rid of his is. Well,
Speaker 1: then what's the perfect song that should replace the Star
Speaker 1: Spangled Banner? Rosen proposes Lean On Me by Bill withers
Speaker 1: its messages I'll take care of you, you take care
Speaker 1: of me. Everybody knows it, and everybody can sing it.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of story we would laugh at twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, but not anymore. This stuff can't be laughed off.
Speaker 1: These people are dead serious, and don't rule out that
Speaker 1: somebody of considerable weight is actually going to suggest this
Speaker 1: someday down the road.