After 9/11, we were exhorted to sing "God bless America" at every opportunity, especially at sporting events, and mainly especially at Major League Baseball games. It's been almost a dozen years and we're still doing it.
There are good and cogent reasons not to have done so in the first place, and also to stop doing it now. Let's explore the world of patriotic songs and national protocols, below the fold.
"God Bless America" (GBA)was written in 1918 by Irving Berlin, an immigrant to the US who was a naturalized citizen and was then serving in the US Army at a base in New York State, using his song-writing talents in the service of his adopted nation. He wrote the sone for a revue, but decided it didn't fit, and he published it separately. The lyrics were a bit different from the version we all know, as it was more a victory song. Over the next 20 years it was occasionally recorded by various singers.
round 1938, Irving Berlin wanted to produce a peace-promoting song, considering what was going on in Europe, and changed some of the lyrics of GBA to produce this effect. It was premiered on Kate Smith's radio program and became a big hit, and Kate Smith used it as her signature song the rest of her career. Woodie Guthrie, the folk song writer and singer, though the song was complacent and unrealistic, and penned "This Land is Your Land" to express his more populist views.
In the late 1950s and 1960s, reactionary politicians and conservative evangelicals used GBA at public meetings as a counter-balance to the counter-culture. I learned the song in elementary school, presented as something old folks sung on Memorial Day. Throughout the 1970s it was used by the NHL Philadelphia Flyers as a theme song, with the Kate Smith recording played before games as a talisman.
After 9/11 we were invited to rise and salute for the singing of GBA during the 7th inning stretch, with something of an overly patriotic reaction from some stadium personnel. In Yankee Stadium a fan who left his seat and headed for the mens' room during this singing was ejected; part of the settlement afterwards was a promise that fan movement would not be restricted during the singing of GBS.
Accordi8ng to the official protocol regarding patriotic songs, during the singing of the national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," citizens are to stand and face the flag, or if there is no flag to face the music. Military personnel are to salute with the first syllable and hold the salute until the end; civilian men are to remove their hats and hold them to the left shoulder with the hand over the heart, or if no hat to put the right hand over the heart. This is not done for any other song--not the national march "Stars and Stripes Forever," "America," "America the Beautiful," "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean," "Yankee Doodle," "This Land is Your Land," OR "GBA."
It was no accident that, in an early episode of "All in the Family," that Archie Bunker, losing a political argument with Michael, began reciting the lyrics to GBA, interrupting himself only to spit out, "Shut up you dumb Polack!" It has always been a politically conservative song and it's time to at least retire the request to rise for its singing, and maybe even offer a variety of similar songs.
In Seattle during the 7th inning stretch we sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and then our (un) official state rock song, "Louie Louie." I consider this a truly enlightened approach to the question of what to do during the 7th inning stretch.