Happy Fourth!

Once again, I represent my annual Fourth of July piece, first seen in 2011:

Last week I got into a somewhat heated discussion with my wife about the story of NBC Sports "editing" the Pledge of Allegiance in a patriotic montage they used in their coverage of the US Open. (They took out the part where the class of kids said "under God".) I argued that we had made a fetish of this piece of much-edited 19th Century doggerel ("under God" was added in the 1950s, "indivisible" sometime before that) and that I would much rather our schoolkids memorized something with real meaning to our nation's values. Asked what that should be, I responded, "How about the Preamble to the Constitution?" I think that is something schoolkids should recite every morning, rather than an oath of allegiance to a piece of cloth.

Well, we're coming up on Independence Day, so I went looking for something to celebrate with here. I'd have loved to find the musical version of the Preamble I sang in Junior High School chorus (but all I could find was the Schoolhouse Rock song--it's cute, but doesn't have the drama of the one we sang). Instead, here's a little kitsch...William Shatner as James Kirk, from the Star Trek episode "The Omega Glory". Like anything Shatner does, it's a touch over the top, but....



Happy Fourth to you all