Dear President Bush,

Diversity makes us strong -- if the Great Experiment of American Democracy means any one thing, it’s that our disagreements are part and parcel of our status as one another’s neighbors. We, the undersigned, while in various states of accord with your policy and presidency (though, like an absurdly high percentage of the world’s population, we do all think the Kyoto Treaty’s a smashing idea and feel a little ashamed that our country refuses to back it), think that one of the changes your administration should be bold enough to usher in is the replacement of our national anthem. Admit it, Mr President: if you had to write a hundred words on what “Whose broad stripes and bright stars/through the perilous fight/o’er the ramparts we watched/were so gallantly streaming” means, you couldn’t do it, and you went to Yale. C’mon, ‘fess up: you don’t know what ramparts are. Nobody does. Even if you do know that “rampart” means “a protective structure used in battle,” you have at best a vague picture of what Francis Scott Key was talking about in his clunkily written if well-intentioned poem in praise of the American revolutionaries, right?

On the other hand, Mr. President, practically every living American can relate to the sentiment “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” as expressed by the late, great American singer Jackie Wilson. We, the undersigned, propose that it replace “The Star Spangled Banner” as our national anthem. It’d make the downtime before sporting events something we’d all look forward to instead of an occasion to make the beer run, and would cause students in the public schools to demand their right to express their patriotic sentiment each morning. You wouldn’t have to prod people to sing along with it any more -- everybody’d sing and dance, regardless of the occasion. Each time we saw the flag, we’d feel a tingle in our feet. The sight of the presidential seal would cause our hips to swivel and our hearts to soar. We would be a nation of well-dressed cool cats, and it would be a stone groove. We would be the envy of the civilized world.

“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” a great work by a great American artist, should be made our national anthem with all due haste. We are confident that you will do the right thing.

Patriotically,

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