Twenty-six kids from Sandy Hook Elementary will sing America the Beautiful at the Superbowl on Sunday. This was announced by the NFL yesterday. The number 26 is the same number of children and adults who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook in December. Apparently an anonymous donor is paying their expenses.
“It’s an honor,” said a local parent who did not wish to be identified.
I imagine this will not go over well with those who support an extreme interpretation of the 2nd amendment, however even people who comment on a popular sports blog, Pro Football Talk, where one can usually find mostly conservative comments whenever politics rears its head there, are generally supportive.
I saw a poll last night on the Rachel Maddow Show that 86% of NRA members support universal background checks, a position Wayne LaPierre yesterday at the Senate Hearing spoke adamantly, if somewhat uncomfortably, against. That’s 86% of NRA members. Support among the general public is even higher – 92%.
Perhaps we are seeing a change in the country’s views on gun control. Four senators have gone public, Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia (previously a vocal NRA supporter) and Chuck Schumer of New York, regarding their discussions regarding a bill that would require universal background checks for gun purchases (the same universal background checks the NRA supported in 1999). Last year none of these Senators would have even considered advocating such a bill with the possible exception of Schumer.
In any case, even if you aren’t a football fan, you may want to tune in at six pm on Sunday to catch the kids from Newtown, CT, children who lost their schoolmates, teachers and Principal to a deranged young man with am AR-15 Bushmaster, sing America the Beautiful. I doubt anyone will dare heckle those children.
Here are members of the Sandy Hook Elementary Choir singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with Ingrid Michaelson:
After hearing that, I have no doubt they’ll do a great job on Sunday night with hundreds of millions watching on television.
Now the Super Bowl has a liberal bias.
I hope the kids enjoy it and don’t hear all the hate thrown their way.
The membership of the NRA is 1.41% of the population of the United States, and 14% of them are against universal background checks. Kind of makes you think.
Oh, and approximately 100% of that 14% are constantly posting comments on the blogs.
I did the maths, on this,
622,300 people holding up common sense gun regulation against
314,627,503 who do????
Why is this even allowed?
Here, this may cheer you up.
http://yubanet.com/usa/Quinnipiac-University-Poll-Finding-Near-100-Support-For-Wider-Background-Chec
ks-For-Gun-buyers.php
The harder the line the NRA takes on the issues of gun control, the more unreasonable they will look to the general population and possibly to their less rabid membership. Because they’ve been so unyielding in the past and because they are now being pushed against the wall for their refusal to allow changes, the NRA can’t concede to making changes because they will appear to be caving.
I won’t call LaPierre a nutjob, because that’s too easy. He is actually a corporate-owned fanatic with an ego that excedes his actual importance. Of course, there are plenty of responsible NRA members who don’t share his zeal. My hope is that they make themselves heard and force their organization to make the small concessions they’ve been asked to make.
“I doubt anyone will dare heckle those children.”
I wish I had your faith in small kernals of humanity inside some humans.
I predict a wave of boos when they sing. Maybe not many, but some.
The NRA is like the Medellin Cartel for gun manufacturers.
I just really hope this singing performance is a healing experience for these children.
Precious, sweet children.
To me, that they are trying to create beauty after what they experienced tells me that they are tremendously strong and brave. No gun will ever make anyone as strong or as brave as these beautiful children.
They deserve so much better from all of us–here, under the rainbow.
Well if you want to vomit go over to Free Republic and see what they think
I can just imagine.
I started to cry before the video even started, and cried all the way through it. Bawled. I think that I work with kids and have a daughter of a similar age and now seeing these faces makes the tragedy more real than ever before.
Putting aside those who are emotionally damaged (ie., NRA & ilk), I can’t begin to imagine the reaction their singing will receive from a national audience. I wonder if it will have an effect on the national conversation similar to the loss of the four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963.