Nice BNA, but why so stingy?

a modest proposal for the National Football League.

I stopped watching the NFL in 2020. I’ve enjoyed the game of (American) football my whole life, but watching those healthy young men sprint off the field in between plays and put on cloth surgical masks struck me as insane.

Turned me right off.

But it was actually very good for me. I’m thrilled about it. Now Sundays come and go and I don’t think about football at all. Between Sundays and Monday Night Football and the occasional Thursday or Saturday games, I feel like I’ve been given back almost 2 whole days out of the week that I used to just waste during football season.

And that doesn’t even account for all the time I spent worrying about my various fantasy football teams/leagues.

So, please don’t think I’m bitter. I have that sin, but not about the NFL. I honestly don’t miss it.

But social life being what it is, I often attend Super Bowl parties, and did so last week. And this year, I witnessed a lovely woman with a beautiful voice singing something described as the “Black National Anthem”.

Um… what?

Not to be too pedantic, but if the song isn’t for all of us, then it’s not a “national anthem”, right?

But whatever. It was a lovely song, sung beautifully. So it got me thinking. Maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon, stuck in my ways about what “words” mean. Maybe I’m just a stick-in-the-mud. Maybe attitudes like mine are retarding progress.

So I say let’s lean into this practice and then ask: why are so many other groups excluded?

We should immediately add a “Latino National Anthem” — oh, excuse me, “Latinx National Anthem”. Then a “Jewish National Anthem”. Maybe we can borrow Israel’s.

Then we add 150-200 other “national anthems”, one for each sliver and slice of Americans who so tightly cling to their racial, ethnic, sexual, ideological, or other distinctions that they find the idea of a “national” “National Anthem” so problematic.

It’ll be awesome. We’ll feature them all, back-to-back, before each American sporting event. Should add 3-4 hours to the prelude of each game, but it’s totally worth it.

Let’s start a petition, America! One national anthem is pathetic. Two is a little better, but still beneath us. Let’s have hundreds. Let’s have thousands!

Oh wait. That’s dumb. We’re all Americans. If the concept of a National Anthem is to have any meaning, there can be only one, and it represents… ya know… the entire nation.

So make a choice, folks. One or none. I’m fine either way. But any other number of “national anthems” is really, really stupid.

Naturally,

Adam

PS: Oh, while I’m in old-man-shakes-fist-at-cloud mode, could you please stop flying fighter jets over the stadiums and putting color guards out on the field in a not-at-all subtle effort to recruit more young bodies to sacrifice themselves to our awful forever-wars?

Please and thank you.