That moment in time, when the National Anthem plays and the colors are unfurled, it IS about the flag and what it represents. That will never change.
You
could argue that the national anthem is about something more than the flag alone. (A call for the Pledge of Allegiance would be
entirely about the flag.) But that's neither here nor there for right now. I'm on record saying this before but it's worth bringing forth again (and who would have thought that something beginning
entirely spontaneously during the seventh-inning stretch of Game One of the 1918 World Series---when "The Star Spangled Banner"
wasn't yet our official national anthem---would end up with today's hoopla?):
Why not cut the playings of "The Star Spangled Banner" in sports back to a far more reasonable level?Before you start snarling, hear me out: Playing it before
every damn last game or race is more than a little on the overkill side. It negates the patriotic impulse or at least reduces it to roteness, and undermines the precept that real patriotism does and should spring from the heart. Compulsion is incompatible with real patriotism.
I'm reminded of writings I cited when arguing in the recent past as I'm about to argue now:
Trump and his army wrapped themselves in the flag when doing battle with the NFL ... 'America First,' they cry. Rah rah. But when it comes to upholding American values in the world — our flag is drooping. People who wet themselves at the sight of football players kneeling are completely blasé when it comes to these congratulations offered to dictators who steal elections.--
Jay Nordlinger, National Review.
Saying that simply kneeling for the national anthem is so offensive that it must be confined to the locker room or banned outright reflects the same hypersensitivity that plagues the social justice left.---
Robby Soave, Reason.
By choosing to make standing for the anthem a matter of coercion rather than a voluntary act of patriotism, it (quite wrongly) suggests that [sports] executives and the kneeling movement's many malcontents in the country are unable to provide a coherent reason why America is worth honoring in spite of its flaws.---
John Hirschauer, The Daily Wire.
So I'll reiterate what I
first argued on the record two years ago:
I'm all in favour of keeping "The Star Spangled Banner" . . . for particular days' sporting events:
* Opening Day games for baseball, football, basketball, hockey (my argument could apply to "O Canada" as well, concerning Canadian teams), soccer, the Master's tournament.
* Auto racing's arguable two most significant events, the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500.
* The three races that involve thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
* Games (races) played (run) on significant national holidays such as (in order of their pending arrivals as I write) Flag Day, the Fourth of July, Labour Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, New Year's Day, Presidents' Day, Martin Luther King's Birthday, Memorial Day.
* All-Star Games for each team sports league.
* Game One of the World Series, the Super Bowl, Game One of the NBA finals, Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the MLS (Major League Soccer) Cup Game.
As I concluded in the second of the two 2018 essays I published on the matter: "Restoring real meaning at the same time you honor the sound precept that real patriotism is not induced at gunpoint, metaphoric or otherwise, in the centennial of Fred Thomas's spontaneous salute and its spontaneous inspiration*, would be wisdom for a country founded by uncommonly wise men, one of whom ended the nation's first presidency in part with a warning against 'the postures of pretended patriotism.' Wisely."
*
- During Game One of the 1918 World Series, a Navy band was present as often happened with military bands in those years. Boston Red Sox third baseman Fred Thomas---himself a Navy man granted a furlough to play in the Series---heard the Navy band begin to play "The Star Spangled Banner" during the seventh-inning stretch and, with no prompting at all, turned to face the American flag and saluted. That prompted other players on both teams and the already-standing fans in the Comiskey Park stands (the National League champion Cubs had agreed to play their legs of the Series in the White Sox park because it was larger than their home playpen) to salute as well.
Thomas's spontaneous salute moved Red Sox owner Harry Frazee a) to offer free World Series tickets to military personnel wounded during still-ongoing World War I and b) to be sure "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played before those Series games played in Fenway Park. The Red Sox won the Series, and Frazee decided to make "The Star-Spangled Banner" a feature before every Red Sox home game the following season.
Other teams in baseball and other sports gradually began doing likewise, entirely on their own, but it never became mandatory in any American professional sports league until the NFL made it so after World War II. To this day baseball has no official rule mandating it but it's remained a tradition.
