Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The Spanish Anthem

The National Anthem. Without it, baseball games could never begin and Jimmy Hendrix would have never been great. While it is true that both of those things probably would happen without it, it is still a tune that most Americans hold very dear to their hearts. Yesterday, millions of people all over this nation sang that song. Sure, that happens every 4th of July, but this time there was a twist. This time, it wasn’t sung in English.

I can’t really see why so many American people are getting angry over this. We don’t exactly have the greatest image in the eyes of the rest of the world, one would think it would be quite refreshing to hear foreign people sing the praises of our great country in their native language.

But it isn’t that simple. The statement that was made was not quite clear. Were they mocking us, or was it nobler? On one hand, they could have been saying “Screw you and your stupid anthem, I’ll sing it in Spanish to piss you off.”, while on the other hand it could have meant “We want to be Americans and will adopt your anthem to prove it.”

The American people are not unjustified in being somewhat angry over this. Think of how the English would have felt if we had taken one of their songs during the revolution and used it for our own cause. We started out as a nation of beat biters; it should not surprise us that someone has finally returned the favor.

But that is a bad analogy. A better one would involve the Germans singing whatever song it is the French sing under the Eiffel tower. Or possibly Americans parading through Baghdad blasting whatever song they hold sacred over loudspeakers in English with guitar riffs in the background. Of course we are going to get angry.

In the end, it was just a bad statement to make, no matter what the meaning behind it was. It did, however, give me an idea on how to solve this whole little immigration mess.

It involves a gaggle of buses and a few dedicated volunteers. What we do is we show up at one of these rallies where they are singing the anthem in Spanish. We scan the crowd for the people who are just lip-synching without really knowing the words and single them out from the crowd. These people will automatically become American citizens. They are the ones who have grasped the true spirit of the song. They have already figured out that crucial part of being American. Why do you think none of us ever sing along at baseball games?

We then hire these people. We pay them a free citizenship and 20$ a head to pick the illegal aliens out of the crowd and put them in the buses. Then, we feed them lunch and ship them all off to an airport, where we put them on a plane and send them to France.

Screw the French.

I’ll bet no one seen that coming.

Shoutwire

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