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How foolish of me to think that any American corporation would ever think of the monetary value of any decision. Corporate shareholders are not interested at all in the potential for remuneration from their investment, all they want to do is see that every American, no matter how rich or poor, gets an equal share of baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. Motivated by altruism and patriotic zeal, they're willing to lay out millions of their own dollars in order to realize that virtuous achievement.
...Which we generously return to them in the form of cable TV and $175 seats at the stadium.
In another thread you were voicing your displeasure with the fact that the US Olympic athletes will be wearing all white outfits in the closing ceremonies rather than the red, white and blue which you favored.
So, does that mean you will be boycotting the Olmpics and watching none of the coverage under your "Don't like-don't go" rule of simplicity?
I won't be spending any money related to the Olympics actually. I will watch some of the events on TV though which is exactly the same thing you can do with baseball since they never televise the singing of "God Bless America". If you don't want to hear it, then don't go to the games and watch them on TV.
If you disapprove of speed limits, don't drive. If you disapprove of income tax, don't work. There should be no place in the America that God so incontrovertibly and singularly blesses, for people to voice their disapproval of things that they can just refrain from participating in. Pretty simple to me.
I NEED to drive and NEED to work. I don't NEED to go to a baseball game. Terrible comparison. As for the rest of your opinion while I agree with it on some levels, I don't think it's a horrible thing to sing either. Like the others have said, you are free to ignore it. Seems simple to me.
Furthermore, the song itself is an insult to my sense of justice, logic, and theology. According to Galatians 6:7, we should be singing "God, lead American to reap what we shall sow", instead of mocking God and selfishly ordering that God bestow his blessing on a single nation of the many, and leave all the rest of the world to labor under the brutal physical laws of the universe dispensing blessing according to merit, entropy, or equilibrium.
How is asking God to bless America leaving the rest of the world to suffer? You are your own insult to your "sense" of justice, logic and theology. Next time someone says, "God bless you" to you, please don't get so upset about the billions of other people that apparently will suffer since only YOU have been given such a request.
Even if I believed in God, there is no way in hell I would stand there with my hat in my hand and solemnly ask Him to wreak his vengeance on everyone else, while selectively blessing only those of us lucky enough to endure this seventh inning stretch.
Uh, have you listened to the lyrics? It says nothing about "vengeance" on everyone else. It's a very nice gesture in which many feel is a beautiful song. You don't like it, well, tough. The hysterical nature in which you and your ilk oppose this song is laughable. Every game I go to, a majority of people are singing it. Hate to burst your bubble, but you are in the very small minority. Enjoy.
I won't be spending any money related to the Olympics actually. I will watch some of the events on TV though which is exactly the same thing you can do with baseball since they never televise the singing of "God Bless America". If you don't want to hear it, then don't go to the games and watch them on TV.
But they do televise GBA. And were you planning on attending the Olympics but decided to stay home and watch it on tv once you learned about the treasonous closing ceremony uniforms?
If you were not planning on attending, then your only boycott option is refusing to watch them on tv, which you apparently are unwilling to do.
And the answer to that can be found, as usual, by following the money. After 9/11, MLB was quick to recognize that more tickets can be sold if they present a double header -- Baseball and a Patrotism Extravaganza, for the price of one. GBA was inserted into the entertainment card as a publicity stunt, but nobody would ever dare (in the land of the free) to call it what it is.
Call it what you will, but if people really hated it, baseball would stop doing it. People enjoy it so it stays. Perhaps months or years from now it will go. When it does, fine. Until then, your bellyaching is noted and dismissed.
Really? EVERY game televises God Bless America? Well, I was watching the Braves game the other day and must have missed it. Same for all the other Reds games I watch on TV. Hmmmmmm...
Really? EVERY game televises God Bless America? Well, I was watching the Braves game the other day and must have missed it. Same for all the other Reds games I watch on TV. Hmmmmmm...
Apparently you watched none of the post season last year. GBA was performed and the ceremony was televised at every single game. All games coming from Yankee Stadium, regular or post season, feature the televised ceremony.
All that is irrelevant anyway. Your notion of "If you don't like all of it, then don't attempt to enjoy any of it" is devoid of logic, akin to airheaded the "America: Love It Or Leave It" bumper stickers which once were abundant. Why can't I go to the game and not like the GBA claptrap? Why can't I voice that displeasure if I care to do so?
Despite your absolutist advice, I shall continue to go to games as I wish, and I shall continue to find the GBA stuff annoying and pointless.
Using your own logic, if you do not agree 100 % with me, then you should leave this forum forever.
You'd think an advanced nation like America wouldn't always be so up for phony shows of patriotism. You can see by our idiot politicians how bad it is, how they always wrap themselves in the flag when someone criticizes them, the irritating way Bush and Obama always say "god bless America" to pander to that certain demographic. I think it's getting a bit better, most young people I know find that corny but it's a long road ahead
How is asking God to bless America leaving the rest of the world to suffer?
So then you wold be equally in favor of a 7th inning song call on God to equally bless all the people in the world, including Iranians and North Koreans, right? Since there is no intention to single out only certain people to receive God's blessing? Which obviously implies that other people be left out of the blessing. Maybe we could rotate it through the nations -- tonight we take off our hats and put our hands on our hearts and pray to God to bless Surinam, to make sure nobody gets slighted by God at our behest, for which we would have to take a share of the blame.
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It says nothing about "vengeance" on everyone else.
What day did they start playing GBA at games? Was it pure coincidence that they just happened to start the day Americans were being whipped into an apoplectic frenzy of vengeance? The ONLY reason we started playing GBA at the games was to instil an unalloyed spirit of pure blind hatred and vengeance in the hearts of the American people, and endorse a trillion-dollar rampage of vengeance that so wonderfully enriched the shareholders of defense contractors. Were you old enough to remember that?
By the Way, I think most, if not all, ballpark now do GBA only on Sundays. I guess they figure that God has a long enough attention span that he can keep our prayers in his rolodex for a whole week without having to keep repeating them over and over again.
What day did they start playing GBA at games? Was it pure coincidence that they just happened to start the day Americans were being whipped into an apoplectic frenzy of vengeance? The ONLY reason we started playing GBA at the games was to instil an unalloyed spirit of pure blind hatred and vengeance in the hearts of the American people, and endorse a trillion-dollar rampage of vengeance that so wonderfully enriched the shareholders of defense contractors. Were you old enough to remember that?
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We're on the same side on this, but I do not think you are helping matters much when you go to such extremes as above.
The reason that GBA was incorporated into ML games wasn't because MLB wanted to ....
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instil an unalloyed spirit of pure blind hatred and vengeance in the hearts of the American people, and endorse a trillion-dollar rampage of vengeance that so wonderfully enriched the shareholders of defense contractors
.....was it? Wasn't the actual reason that MLB either wanted to capitalize on the prevailing hyped up patriotic atmosphere by fusing their product with the tinsel of Americana, or MLB feared a customer backlash if they failed to radiate the appearance of rallying to the colors in a time of crisis?
With the above you are, without justification, transferring the motives for going to war which you perceived in the administration of President Bush, to the owners of MLB. Do you have any evidence at all which suggests that as a group, ML owners were especially gung ho for a "rampage of vengeance" or were highly interested in seeing defense contractors grow wealthy? Or is that just another jtur tar-em-all with one brush convenience?
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