God Bless Us Everyone?
by Joshua Adams

Major League Baseball responded in the only way appropriate to Sept. 11 — by cancelling several days' worth of games. By the time the boys of summer returned, the country had swollen with a patriotism at once moving and bizarre. While the New York Mets fell to the anguished work of refashioning their famous skyline logo, a bipartisan throng of Congressional leaders drummed out a fist-pumping, chest-thumping rendition of "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps. And soon the two became one: In lieu of the customary chorus of "Take Me out to the Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch, MLB commissar Bud Selig proposed a mandatory recital of Irving Berlin's pre-World War II hymn. Well into the 2002-2003 season, the practice is still with us. Unfortunately.

The Library of Congress calls "God Bless America" America's unofficial national anthem — not a particularly astute revision of the circumstances surrounding the song's conception. Berlin originally composed the song as part of a zany revue, but shelved it on account of its serious tone. He brought it back in 1938 — probably mindful of the deteriorating situation in Europe — and it became a smash hit. Berlin meant it to be a peace song, and radio singer Kate Smith delivered it on Armistice Day in 1938. It is a product of the times; beyond the first line's acknowledgement that "storm clouds gather far across the sea," the song is sweetly introspective, if not outright isolationist:

Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

Of course, it's natural to retreat inward at a time of catastrophe, and it's clear why the song caught on in those surreal days after Sept. 11. The piece offers a kind of utopian vision spoken in a naturalized religious vocabulary so indistinguishable from our country's official pronouncements ("Good night, and God bless America ..."). And the conspicuous absence in the song of any man-made objects that could blow up or be blown up probably appealed to the American unconscious.

The French historian Marc Bloch said, "You can't argue with a song," and along those lines there is another reason for the song's attraction: triumphalism. Bloch's right, in that songs — like poems and paintings — don't reside in the realm of philosophical counter-punching along with the cultural critics in all their voluptuous faux-grouchiness. Sept. 11 was a moment where much of the mythology of American invulnerability came undone; "God Bless America" provided a proxy for the ultimately real satisfaction of the annihilation of an ultimately realized enemy. Politicians and activists could debate the rights and wrongs, but they couldn't argue with the fervor that "God Bless America" helped foment.

Which is why it's time to get rid of the song, at least in the context of Major League Baseball, a tradition already so thick with patriotic syrup that fans continue to subsidize "America's sport" even as its owners raise ticket prices to pay unconscionable salaries. It doesn't make sense to throw one more song into the mix, and it makes even less to keep it there. We already have an anthem, and it's a better choice than its current proxy.

"The Star Spangled Banner" is powerfully imagistic and alliterative, even in its title, whereas "God Bless America" is tiresome, didactic and general. Oceans white with foam? Who would have guessed? At least "rockets' red glare" underlines a clichéd image with a few growling "r" sounds. Francis Scott Key wasn't Whitman, but he knew what he was doing.

Even "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which "God Bless America" has replaced, is a superior piece of pro-American propaganda. Consider those oft-quoted but recently missed lines:

Take me out to the ballgame
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks
I don't care if I ever get back ...
So it's root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it's a shame
Cause it's one, two, three strikes you're out
At the old ball game!

Since the "ball game" at question was invented in the States and played overseas in a country we devastated with two nuclear bombs and then occupied, the lyrics immediately echo our global hegemony. The command to purchase surplus goods continually ("I don't care if I ever get back") stands as a celebration of nativistic capitalism (where else do you find Cracker Jacks?), not to mention the time-honored tradition of product placement. "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" even celebrates the lawful transition of power that lies at the heart of the American electoral system. Three strikes, or a few votes in the electoral college, or a hostile Supreme Court, and you're out. What more could we ask for? Anyone can ask for the blessings of an unknown God. Only Americans can turn a break for buying concessions into ideology.

E-mail Joshua Adams at joshua at uchicago dot edu.