Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” is a bullshit song. Woodie Guthrie answered the bullshit in real time by writing “This Land is Your Land” in response. So I’m never sad when that bullshit song gets exposed. Here are some other thougths on Kate Smith and the Flyers.
-The Flyers suck anyway, so maybe changing up the song may actually help.
– As “beloved” as Kate Smith is, if the flyers hired German rockers, Lucifer’s Friend and happened to actually win something, Lucifer’s Friend would instantly become a beloved tradition.
– To put Kate’s Smith’s egergious racist song into a hsitorical context, it was the 1930’s so white racist Americans were widely known as “all white Americans, (except Italians who were semi-black)”.
– Here are some of the lyrics to ‘That’s Why Darkies Were Born’ as sung by kate Smith:
“Someone had to pick the cotton,
Someone had to pick the corn,
Someone had to slave and be able to sing,
That’s why darkies were born;Someone had to laugh at trouble,
Though he was tired and worn,
Had to be contented with any old thing,
That’s why darkies were born;
Like I said thought – it was the 1930’s so Smith had no idea that this was racist as all fuck.