Mitt Romney loves America. And Mitt Romney loves “America the Beautiful”. You don’t even have to ask him; he’ll tell you. He won’t just tell you; he’ll recite a verse…or two…or three…or even sing it to you, as Republican campaign audiences all over Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida have found out. (Get ready Nevada; you’re next.)
But do Mitt Romney and all those nice Republicans know the sordid history behind “America the Beautiful”?
-That those “pilgrim feet, Whose stern impassion’d stress, A thoroughfare for freedom beat” are the feet of Yankee social reformers and carpetbaggers?
-That the “heroes prov’d, In liberating strife, Who more than self their country lov’d, And mercy more than life” are the heroes of the Union Army crushing the
secessionists and empancipating 4 million slaves?
-That the “gleam” of the nation’s “alabaster cities” is the shining example of Chicago(!) and cities like it?
And that’s just the lyrics. The poet who wrote them is perhaps even more horrifying to contemplate.
Katherine Lee Bates was a Wellesley College English professor, a feminist, a lesbian, a support of labor unions, of settlement houses and of social reform movements throughout her life—a living embodiment of the coastal, cultural elites of her day.* Why is Mitt Romney singing the praises of Katherine Lee Bates? (On the other hand, she was a lifelong Republican, so maybe that it explains it.)
[Don’t tell Ann Coulter (Cornell ’84) or Laura Ingraham (Dartmouth ’85).]
P.S. On the whole, the fact that Mitt Romney sings in public is one of his more attractive, and humanizing qualities. (And goodness knows, he needs all the humanizing qualities he can manufacture.)
A word of caution, though: Mitt, you don’t want to get into a singing contest with this guy.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com