Who Told You What This Means?

It seems enrollment in the University of Sarah Palin Online history department has really taken off.

A small northern Indiana college has decided to stop playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at sporting events after starting to do so for the first time last year.

First off, very clearly written sentence. It appears the editors of theindychannel.com hold English degrees from the University of Sarah Palin Online.

Goshen College's board of directors said it will find an alternative that honors the country and the Mennonite Church-affiliated school's pacifist traditions.

The 1,000-student college has been playing an instrumental version of the national anthem, followed by a peace prayer, before games and other events.

OK, people protesting the National Anthem because we're at war. Been going on for years. All we need to do is call up Anna Benson and she'll straighten them out.

Some were upset with the school's decision last year because the song's lyrics contain references to using war and military might to defend the country.

Uh...ex-squeeze me?

If you wanna protest American jinogism, have at it. You are, by many accounts a) probably correct in your indignation towards American foreign policy and b) perfectly within your rights as an American in this freedom-loving land.

But get your facts straight. The lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner are pretty much just an account of the ass blasting the Baltimore Harbor was receiving from the British, and subsequent adjulation that, beyond any reasonable expectation, there was more than a few smoldering embers still there come dawn.

We've done a lot of terrible things in the years since Francis Scott Key wrote that long, rhetorical question we call our national anthem, and that stanza, in my mind, is pretty unobjectionable by comparison. If you're looking for an expression of American militarism to protest, this just isn't it.

But this might be.