Rant #2,452: The Star Spangled Banner

Good morning, happy September 23, and happy autumn, or fall, if you prefer.

It has been fall for about the past hour or so, jumping over from summer sometime after 3 a.m.

Although I do not normally wake up that early during the week, it's funny, I do think I woke up briefly when we changed over to fall, and then went back to sleep.

I guess I wanted to be up at the dawn of autumn, or fall, if you prefer.

I am actually never one to look forward to autumn, as I am allergic to the entire season.

Yes, that is correct, the season--what with its falling leaves and changing colors--makes my allergies go haywire, and officially, I am allergic to the entire season.

And to prove my point, I am all stuffed up this morning, my eyes are watery, and my nose is running like an open faucet.

But that being said, each morning that I wake up on time, I turn on the television to the local news, and i like what I hear before the news rolls out on the screen.

For about the last month, the flagship station of the CBS network, WCBS-TV in New York, has shown about a minute clip of a young girl singing "The Star Spangled Banner."

This came without any fanfare, and without any warning, but it has come on the screen consistently during the past month, and it is nice to hear right before the coming of the local news.

Of course, closing the broadcast day used to end with the playing of the Star Spangled Banner for most TV stations, which then lead to the test pattern coming on the screen.

Those days are long, long gone, since most TV stations now broadcast 24 hours a day, but the tradition has now been brought back at the beginning of the day, in the current twist on honoring our country on television.

I could find little on the Internet about who sings this song or what prompted the inclusion of the song in WCBS-TV's broadcast day, but I did find that the station's broadcast of this song might be following a national trend.

Nexstar stations around the country have also taken up the torch of the song, also broadcasting it at the beginning of the day, so I don't know if WCBS-TV's effort is part of that, or the station's effort to copy that move.

Whatever it is, and whatever reason that it is being broadcast, really is immaterial. It is nice to hear the song again on a regular basis on TV, and it goes against the current PC grain of the song, where who sings it is as important as the song itself.

If you remember, earlier this year, the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Flyers both caved into PC pressure and removed the playing of the song by Kate Smith from their games, because she had the audacity nearly 100 years ago to sing slave songs on her movie and radio broadcasts.

Heck, the Flyers even took down her statue from their environs.

She didn't write the songs, she just sung them, which was conventional for the time, but looking through it all with 2019 eyes, she was thought to have done a racist thing, and thus, her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was banned from public consumption by these two sports teams.

As much as I love the Yankees, their response was absolutely ridiculous, a knee jerk reaction to a problem that never really existed, except in the minds of people who get upset at just about everything.

So that being said, it was really nice to hear to Star Spangled Banner come on the screen about a month ago, and while it is not being sung by Kate Smith, at least we can hear the song now without the fear that the PC Police will get this rendition of the song like they got the Kate Smith rendtion and will stop its being played.

Nope, I don't think they are going to find anything on this young girl singing the WCBS-TV version.

So test patterns be damned; we now have the song being played on the TV at the beginning of the broadcast day.

What a relief from the commercials touting crepey skin relief and under eye bag creams.

"Oh say can you see" for sure!

(I have some personal business to perform tomorrow, and I will have to skip Tuesday's Rant. I will be back to this column in Wednesday, so speak to you again then.)