Yes, it's time for More Random Things You Probably Don't Care About!

[primroseburrows]

Yes, it's time for More Random Things You Probably Don't Care About!

• 
  I've been meaning to link this brilliant thing for days, but I keep forgetting to do it (moi? Forget something? How shocking!). See, this is why I could never live in Québec: I couldn't possibly live up to their motto. I'd be thrown out on my derriere.
  
  Anyway, here's the video. Hilarious and pathetically true:
  
  
  
  
  The guy who does the music is Eric Schwartz. I don't know anything about him, but the first thing read when I Googled him was "Eric Schwartz has morphed ADHD into Art", and that's all I really need to know. :D
  
  
• 
  
  This guy, I know. I grew up knowing him. Give up seven-ish minutes of your day to watch a real, old-school Democrat in action:
  
  
  
  
  Call it noblesse oblige if you must, but I don't see obligation, here, I see anger. Watching this makes my oft-flickering hope for America burn a bit brighter. Every time I turn around I'm more proud of my home state. Way to go, Senator.
  
  
• 
  [Poll #917984]
  
  
• and finally, a cool little meme:
  
  Reply to this and I will:
  1) Tell you why I friended you.
  2) Associate you with a song/movie.
  3) Tell a random fact about you.
  4) Tell my first memory of you.
  5) Associate you with an animal/fruit.
  6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
  
  Reposting in your own LJ is encouraged, but not insisted upon. :)
  
  
• Okay, must go. Off to songdog's house!

Comments

[newleaf31.livejournal.com]

I think that almost all the factors you list have the potential to make a song patriotic (well, not so much "stirring music" or "religious references" -- the first can apply to almost any genre of music, and the second better applies to hymnody, though granted, there's some overlap). But I also think that almost all of them can be taken to extremes and/or misappropriated. For instance, "lyrics that inspire national pride" may be perfectly fine, because there's basically nothing wrong with being proud of your country. But the line between "national pride" and jingoism is very, VERY blurry.

As for my song choice, I picked "America the Beautiful." I like that song because I do like celebrations of the land itself and its beauty, and because I like imagery for the ideals on which the country was founded: "Oh beautiful for patriot dream / that sees beyond the years / thine alabaster cities gleam, / undimm'd by human tears." Other parts of it are unsettling, though: "Oh beautiful for pilgrim feet / whose stern, impassioned stress / a thoroughfare for freedom beat / across the wilderness" (and in the meantime displaced thousands of indigenous peoples and destroyed elements of the very natural beauty we just sang about in the last verse...). I can't think of a flawless patriotic song, truth be told -- American or otherwise. I think the very genre of "patriotic music" necessitates that a piece of music be comprised largely of propaganda.

I agree with you -- Ted was pissed, not just towing the party line. Also, I'm in love with you, because you said "noblesse oblige." ♥

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Oh, well said! Hear, hear!

[newleaf31.livejournal.com]

Thanks! :D I appreciate that!

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I can say other foreign phrases:

"Carpe diem". "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". "Peace, order and good government". :)

[newleaf31.livejournal.com]

*swoons... possibly from laughing so hard at the third one*

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Hey, I didn't make it up. Talk to the Fathers of Confederation. Oh, wait, they're all dead.