{"id":517,"date":"2011-02-15T17:47:01","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T22:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=517"},"modified":"2012-04-11T03:34:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T08:34:45","slug":"why-christina-aquilera-will-never-sing-the-national-anthem-at-the-us-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/517\/why-christina-aquilera-will-never-sing-the-national-anthem-at-the-us-open","title":{"rendered":"Why Christina Aquilera Will Never Sing the National Anthem at the US Open"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Defender and Pretender: Congressional Open, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

When I covered the NBA a couple of decades ago, I used to dread the obligatory pre-game performance of the National Anthem.\u00a0 I have a robust sense of empathy and found it extremely uncomfortable to watch when a singer would panic and forget the words, which happened with alarming frequency, given that the performers\u00a0were typically amateur and young.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So I took to hanging out back in the press room until after the anthem had been sung.\u00a0\u00a0 I self-diagnosed and named\u00a0a curious new medical condition to explain my aversion: francisscottkeyesaphobia<\/em>, defined as the “fear of watching someone humilate him- or herself by forgetting the words to the national anthem in front of thousands of people at a sporting event.”<\/p>\n

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Pebble Beach, Site of 2010 US Open<\/p><\/div>It\u2019s too bad for Christina Aquilera that former Portland Trailblazer coach Maurice Cheeks wasn\u2019t in attendance at this year\u2019s Super Bowl, because he could have stepped up to help her out when she started ad-libbing over\u00a0the country’s most famous lyrics.\u00a0\u00a0 Some years ago at a Blazer home game, a young girl performing the National Anthem froze mid-note, and Cheeks immediately walked out, put his arm around her shoulder and started singing with her, which restored her voice and won Cheeks the admiration of a lot of fans.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Almost every America sporting event now expropriates the National Anthem, a shameless tactic to enlist the patriotism and good will of fans for what is, after all, typically a commercial enterprise\u2014 one more lunge for your entertainment dollar.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Baseball started the anthem habit eighty years ago, and then only because the President of the United States was in attendance. \u00a0\u00a0It took a while, but now it\u2019s ubiquitous, and largely empty of significance\u2014a weightless habit.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the sport whose fans and practitioners, both amateur and professional, are collectively the most conservative among US sportsmen (with the possible exception of NASCAR), dispenses entirely with the anthem ritual.\u00a0\u00a0 Golf tournaments don\u2019t have as formal a start as other sporting events, and besides, if you launched every player off the first tee with his national anthem ringing in his ears, it would take a month to\u00a0finish a golf tournament.\u00a0 At last year\u2019s US Open, the winner was an Irishman (northern variety), the sixth foreign victor in the last ten years,\u00a0and there were competitors from 25 countries in all.\u00a0\u00a0 And while it might have been refreshing to hear the Finnish national anthem, or South Africa\u2019s, or Fiji\u2019s, I am glad the USGA treats our national Open championship purely as a sporting event, and not as an excuse for a decorous display of patriotism.\u00a0\u00a0 The Open identifies and\u00a0honors the best golfer, not the one from the toughest country.\u00a0 \u00a0It makes me proud to be an American.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

TheAPosition writers are big fans of Phil Mickelson<\/a> and John Daly although we don’t want to hear them sing our National Anthem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I covered the NBA a couple of decades ago, I used to dread the obligatory pre-game performance of the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3595,9,17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pebble-beach","category-golf","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2011\/02\/Pebble-Beach-CA1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}