An elementary school around Boston was having the kids sing at an assembly. Pretty typical stuff. The motif was about the 50 states and they were going to sing some songs. But the final song was set to be Lee Greenwood’s anthemic “God Bless the USA.”
You know, I don’t even have to write anymore because you already know what happens next. Some jellyfish spined administrator decided that song was way to…uhm…God-y so they didn’t just cancel the song, they changed the lyrics from “God bless the USA” to “We love the USA.”
Now for the good news. Parents complained. That’s actually pretty impressive nowadays that parents actually complained. So what did the school do?
The school decided there would be no singing at the assembly at all.
That’s bizarre enough. But then it goes from bizarre to surreal. The songwriter and original singer of the song Lee Greenwood heard about the controversy and issued this statement, according to CBS:
“Maybe the school should have asked the parents their thoughts before changing the lyrics to the song. They could have even asked the writer of the song, which I of course would have said you can’t change the lyrics at all or any part of the song. The most important word in the whole piece of music is the word God, which is also in the title God Bless The USA. We can’t take God out of the song, we can’t take God out of The Pledge of Allegiance, we can’t take God off of the American currency. Let us also remember, the phrase God Bless the USA has a very important meaning for those in the military and their families, as well as new citizens coming to our Country. The song is played at every naturalization ceremony behind The National Anthem. If the song is good enough to played and performed in its original setting under those circumstances, it surely should be good enough for our children.”
Behold the awesomely awesomeness of Lee Greenwood who simply puts his words onto a statement and voila! Greenwood gets results.
Right after Greenwood spewed his verbiage, the Superintendent of the schools must have heard that Greenwood had released a statement, defecated all over himself, and issued a statement saying that the songs in their original form as Greenwood intended are back in and and they will sing Greenwood’s song the way it was written.
So you’ve got your happy ending. God is back in. Thanks to Lee Greenwood.
April 6, 2012 at 12:28 am
Greenwood is the Chuck Norris of music. Ignore him at your peril.
April 6, 2012 at 1:11 am
"God Bless the USA has a very important meaning for those in the military and their families" As an atheist veteran, not so much.
We can’t take God out of the song, we can’t take God out of The Pledge of Allegiance: "under God" added in 1954 due to red scare.
I like the song alot, thanks Lee, but the God is symbolic more than a literal god in my singing of it.
April 6, 2012 at 2:32 am
Ya gotta laugh when they refer to these maggots as "educators". Whaddya know … Jesus Christ is right again:
"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all this they will do to you on my account, because they do not know him who sent me."
April 6, 2012 at 3:18 am
I believe the song God Bless the USA came out before the first Gulf War aka Desert Storm, but it had a resurgence at that time. Both my husband and I were Air Force officers–he an F-16 pilot and I was a doctor. We had three kids ages 4,3, and 1. My husband deployed and flew over 30 combat missions. I was in line to deploy but hostilities ended before I ever went. I spent a great deal of time on my knees during those months and God Bless the USA was the anthem of those times. To this day I cannot listen to it without tearing up. God bless Lee Greenwood!
April 6, 2012 at 5:01 pm
I get choked up every time I hear it, they play it at all the you've-passed-boot-camp ceremonies– not the graduation, but the one that really matters, where you just passed the final test.
April 6, 2012 at 5:04 pm
There is also such a thing as copyright law.
A song under copyright (in this case, "God Bless the USA") can NOT be sung publicly with altered lyrics without the permission of the copyright holder.
April 6, 2012 at 5:12 pm
The song is copyrighted. I hope Greenwood sends them a cease and desist letter. Use the song as written or not at all
April 6, 2012 at 5:12 pm
The song is copyrighted. I hope Greenwood sends them a cease and desist letter. Use the song as written or not at all
April 6, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Maybe the school administrator needs to be replaced. He or she does not have the best interest of the children in mind.
April 7, 2012 at 8:27 am
I don't get their problem with the song. Parents have no problem with their kids believing in santa claus, no reason to treat God differently if you're an atheist. -shrug-
April 7, 2012 at 3:11 pm
As a Viet-Nam veteran I hear the song once a year on Veterans' Day at our local school, words intact. But then, I also vote in our local school board elections so that our children have good role models.
The principle is worth a vote; otherwise, a pretty forgettable song.
April 7, 2012 at 11:26 pm
personally, I think this is one of the sappiest, cheesiest, lamest songs recorded during my lifetime, pandering to sentimentality over artistic substance (on par with the "Where were you" song about 9/11). But if the school decided to use it, as Lee says, they MUST use it in its entirety and cannot/should not change the words on both moral, artistic (eh…) or legal grounds.
Personally, I prefer "America the Beautiful" or "God Bless America".
April 9, 2012 at 5:16 am
The guy who wrote the song ought to be able to say whether it gets performed in altered form.
Good for Lee Greenwood.
April 10, 2012 at 2:16 pm
You're nothing but a bunch of Republican hacks trying to find wedge issues so you can continue your war on the middle class and keep shipping our money overseas. I don't care about lyrics to a silly song.
April 10, 2012 at 11:14 pm
@too-stupid-to-sign-a-screenname, 4/10 9:16 AM: the middle class are the small-business owning employers, the doctors crushed by frivolous lawsuits, and the entrepreneurs being crushed by needless regulation.
Who's making war on the middle class, smartness?
April 11, 2012 at 1:25 am
Thank you for proving my point, stupid partisan republican hack. Hehehehehehe
April 11, 2012 at 1:32 am
For the other Anonymous… The jobs are still going overseas even with your new King in power. You are working off of an old paradigm. The corporate world is now made up of liberal elitists who also send jobs overseas to share the wealth amassed by the hard work of Americans in the name of fairness. They are no better than the republican elitists that sold the American workers out in the last century simply for profit. As long as the American worker is divided between ourselves we will never concentrate on the actual perpetrators of policies and practices that have devastated the working class of our great nation.