Friday, April 28, 2006

Oy -- now Bush is pandering to the know-nothings:

The national anthem should be sung in English -- not Spanish -- President Bush declared Friday, amid growing restlessness over the millions of immigrants here illegally.

...When the president was asked at a Rose Garden question-and-answer session whether the anthem should be sung in Spanish, he replied: "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."...


Yeah? So why does that preclude also singing it in Spanish?

I'd like to point out that Francis Haffkine Snow translated "The Star-Spangled Banner" into Spanish in 1919. The lyrics are here, courtesy of the Library of Congress.



Click through the links at this About.com page and you can read Snow's translation and three others that predate the new one that's got all the nativists' knickers in a twist.

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