our fearless leader, president bush, hath decreed that the national anthem should be sung in english.
isn’t that a foreign language for him? oh, the irony.
i’d hereby like to translate the national anthem for president bush, so he’ll know what it means.
because, evidently, he hasn’t a clue about what it means.
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
mr. bush, this actually refers to the flag. it is not a mandate to make the apocalypse, the twilight’s last gleaming, actually happen so you can proudly hail it before the earth swallows up all sinners, or whatever it is that happens in the bible’s book of revelations. i know the end-timers who support you so stridently want this to happen, and your policies seem to reflect a need to please them. what with your wars, and views on global warming, and energy policies, and such.
but try to think outside your box for a second. remember the flag? that thing that you want to protect from burning via a constitutional amendment, even though the burning of a flag is emblematic of the rights the flag embodies?
it’s all about the flag, dude. not about the end of the world.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
again, the flag. you may think that watching a perilous fight from a vantage point safe behind a rampart is analogous to your present situation, as you sit in the safety of your oval office and create fictitious reasons to send our fellow americans to die in a needless war.
and you’d be right. it is, indeed, analogous.
but really, it’s just about the flag. stars and stripes and inspiration and whatnot.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
now this part you are definitely taking too literally. you don’t have to start a war, with bombs bursting and rockets launching, to prove to everyone that our flag is still there. in fact, the rest of the world, and for that matter a large part of your electorate, is all too aware that our flag is still there. in fact, it’s everywhere–it’s all over the damn place where it shouldn’t be, like iraq.
and never where it should be, like darfur.
in fact, most people of the world, myself included, would probably settle for far fewer bombs (they really are getting expensive, aren’t they?) and a less bullying profile.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
well yes, it does still wave.
but not for much longer, if you have anything to do with it.
and, unfortunately for us all, you do.