"(a) I suspect it's been more thoroughly emptied of significance (few people get teary, for example)"

I've never seen anyone get teary at the Star Spangled Banner, but then I've only been to a few hundred games when it's been played.

"(b) once a year is different from 2430 times a year;"

Undoubtedly true, and it is really much more than 2430 times, given other sports, minor leagues, school games, etc. That said, isn't it possible that such repetition helps in "empyting it of meaning"?

"(c) the political agenda of Anglican hymn-singing is less tendentious than that of US nationalism"

I presume this is a statement of your opinion, as opposed to a claim of fact.

Wyatt Earp wrote:

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BrunoMaggiore wrote:

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I don't know what's really meant, but I do know if you told a stadium full of American baseball fans that their singing the national anthem was "fucking weird" they would sing all the louder while giving you the finger.

What's your point?

That's my question actually, what is your point? Is calling something "fucking weird" just a crude way of saying "kinda different" or does it hint at something nefarious? i.e.,

"ostentatious, emotionally overwrought, collective public displays of patriotism, marked by strong social pressure to conform (as you'll know if you've ever sat through the Anthem)."

I mean that's a pretty tendentious reading of what goes on at the typical ballgame isn't it? I see it as a completely innocuous tradition, if one that certainly outrages good taste more often than not.

Also, ursus is exactly right that the tradition of singing everywhere it has been all but emptied it of significance for most people. However, times of national unity/crisis can certainly rejuvenate its meaning.

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Iran-Contra just looked to most like some shifty gamesmanship in the name of fighting Communism, i.e. the greater good. And nobody understood what was really going on in Nicaragua. As scandals go though it was more harmful to our constitutionality than most of the subsequent ones.

It's not even that, though, as far as I'm concerned. Even if it had been totally legal, it should have been a Suez scale scandal resulting in the ending of the careers of everyone involved. I know you don't need reminding, but it helps to set it out in plain terms. The US government secretly sold weapons to America's sworn enemy - one that brought down Carter a decade earlier when he tried to stand up to them and fucked up - and used the money to fund some of the most vicious terrorists the world has ever seen. It's truly staggering. And then, to top it all off, barely a decade later, many of the same people are back at the heart of an administration that claims to make fighting terrorism its central priority, and to have "moral clarity". Watergate pales in comparison, and in fact I really can't think of a worse scandal in the last 50 years.

Ursus, could you distinguish between a statement of opinion and a claim of fact? Aren't they the same thing? No-one says "This is my opinion but I think it's false", surely?

Because, yeah, I think Anglicanism, which is what's being affirmed by the hymn-singing, is pretty politically fuzzy. That probably wasn't true at the time the custom was coined, but it is now. It's also subscribed to, actively, by a smaller proportion of the crowd than is nationalism in the US.

I don't go along with the idea that ceaseless repetition robs the act of meaning, except in the limited sense that it makes that meaning invisible, implicit and automatically assumed. Something that supports my position more than yours, I think.

Certainly, were the intended effect to make Americans less inclined towards nationalism, we would have to assume things weren't going all that well: surveys consistently suggest that nationalism runs at quite a high rate in that country, compared to most countries with comparable economies and cultures.

Clearly, it's not your contention that none of your country's traditions are politically problematic, and I'm not quite sure why you're letting this one off the hook. Bruno's perceived this as coming from a "We're better than you are" kind of a motivation, but that kind of mistake wouldn't be your style normally. It may be that we're apt, with our history, to get a whiff of fascism where there isn't one, but still: this repeated affirmation of love of country is not, by any reasonable criterion, a politically neutral ritual. Surely we can agree on that.

BrunoMaggiore wrote:

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I see it as a completely innocuous tradition...

And ad hoc, GO and I see it as less innocuous.

Be that as it may, though, if "weird" means "at odds with the practice almost everywhere else", then it's weird. Objectively. You might prefer "exceptional" or "distinctive", but outsiders are going to see the practice as weird.

No. It's definitely weird. Because these are sporting events that have no link to the nation state, to national identity, to anything particularly American. They're just people kicking/hitting/throwing a ball around. There's no sensible context for having a national anthem here. Which makes it weird. It's like singing hymns before going to a restaurant or wearing a football shirt for a normal night in the pub. It's weird because it's out of context.

Yeah, or "Good morning, and welcome to today's meeting on bicycle contraflow in the Town Centre one-way system. God I love this country. Now, we have apologies for absence from..."

What's especially weird about our FA Cup final custom, of course, is that Abide With Me is a funeral hymn.

Wyatt, I really wasn't trying to be contentious. It just seemed that there was a real difference between the nature of your 3 statements.

To me, the first is obviously grounded in your personal experience and/or observation (and I as noted, that experience differs from mine). The second is what I would call a claim of fact and the third is your opinion (which I happen to share personally, but don't think is capable of universal acceptance in the same way as the second statement is. One need only look at all the hoo hah at Lambeth to see that some people consider aspects of the Anglican tradition to be highly political.

BTW, I don't know of any other country in the world where hymns are sung before sporting events (unless you consider God Save America a hymn).

I'm also not following your point about repetition. Why has "Abide with Me" been emptied of its meaning? Is it because you think that Anglican hymn singing has no material political element? I genuinely don't understand your point.

I don't think I'm "letting this one off the hook", btw. I've already noted that I stopped standing when I was 8 or 9. The degree to which the tradition (because that's how I see it, equivalent to the Seventh Inning Stretch) is periodically hijacked by gingoist wackos (of whom we have more than our share) bothers the heck out of me. I was appalled when Steinbrenner and Giulani instituted God Save America in the 7th inning. What I can't tell is if you are asserting that it is a political ritual for every single participant; I don't think it is.

Wyatt Earp wrote:

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I don't go along with the idea that ceaseless repetition robs the act of meaning, except in the limited sense that it makes that meaning invisible, implicit and automatically assumed. Something that supports my position more than yours, I think.

But we're disagreeing about what that "meaning" actually is aren't we.

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Certainly, were the intended effect to make Americans less inclined towards nationalism, we would have to assume things weren't going all that well: surveys consistently suggest that nationalism runs at quite a high rate in that country, compared to most countries with comparable economies and cultures.

"Nationalism" can mean different things to different people. The national anthem is a cypher for unreflectively expressing basic love of country; I doubt you could make the case that it's the slippery slope to fascism.

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Clearly, it's not your contention that none of your country's traditions are politically problematic, and I'm not quite sure why you're letting this one off the hook.

Because it's not politically problematic.

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Bruno's perceived this as coming from a "We're better than you are" kind of a motivation, but that kind of mistake wouldn't be your style normally.

No, not that, just part of the perennial need to bring Americans down several notches.

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It may be that we're apt, with our history, to get a whiff of fascism where there isn't one, but still: this repeated affirmation of love of country is not, by any reasonable criterion, a politically neutral ritual. Surely we can agree on that.

I agree that it can't be politically neutral insofar as every ritual is political in some way, but I also don't see expressing basic love of country as an inherently a bad thing.

The Irish national anthem, which is a terrible piece of music, is played before all matches in the All-Ireland gaelic football and hurling championships. In my experience, about a quarter of the crowd sing it and the rest don't bother. The fans also start bellowing en masse ("Come on the Dubs!" "Go on Kerry!" etc) well before the end of the song.

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What I can't tell is if you are asserting that it is a political ritual for every single participant; I don't think it is.

No, but that's setting the bar rather high. There were probably plenty of people who went to Nuremberg rallies mainly for the piss-up afterwards. (Not that I'm claiming any parallel, etc etc.)

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No, not that, just part of the perennial need to bring Americans down several notches.

Oh, talk sense.

Laterne, the perceived link at the time the tradition started was tha