On Mar 11, 12:46*pm, "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
On Mar 10, 3:56*pm, Hatunen wrote:



On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 19:44:45 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
wrote:
On Mar 9, 5:43*pm, Hatunen wrote:
On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 04:48:34 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels"
wrote:
On Mar 9, 6:18*am, Chuck Riggs wrote:
IINM, there are references to God in the Constitution and in the
Declaration of Independence, both written well before the Gipper's
day.

The texts are easily available on line.

The closest you can come is "Creator."

And the prohibitions of a religious test, and of establishment.

And you won't find a president ending a speech -- let alone every
public appearance -- with "God bless America" before Reagan. (When did
the Irving Berlin tune become ubiquitous?)

During World War II, as sung by Kate Smith.

No.

Why do you say, "No"? Are you refuting that Kate Smith sang it or
that it was during WW2?

I am not "refuting" anything. I am denying that the song became
ubiquitous during WWII.

Well, 'ubiquitous' gives you plenty of room to move, doesn't it? But
let's just note that it was first sung by Kate Smith on the radio in
1938, later in the movie 'This is the Army' (1943).

"The song was a hit; there was even a movement to make "God Bless
America" the national anthem of the United States....Berlin gave the
royalties of the song to the God Bless America Fund for redistribution
to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of the USA."...saith Wikipedia.

Also, in 1940, Woody Guthrie, reportedly fed up with hearing Kate
Smith singing the song on the radio, wrote 'This Land is Your Land' as
his own response.

So although I would not be so foolish as to try to prove "ubiquity", I
would say indications are that it was already a very well known song
during WWII.

Ross Clark


It was a joke that some team in Philadelphia used Kate Smith before
every game. When was that?

Never heard of it. But I'm not much of a baseball fan.

I didn't say anything about baseball.

Nowadays it's as if it has replaced the long, unsingable one as The
Anthem.

Odd. I rarely hear the song these days, and never when the SSB
should have been played. As an instrumental only GBA isn't as
anthemy as SSB. It's the words to GBA that are so sentimental.

Many BASEBALL teams use it at the seventh-inning stretch in place of
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

BTW, I have no trouble singing the SSB.

Singing it well? So you're probably a trained singer.

@nd BTW, someone in some op-ed column this week noted that the
Olympically much played "O Canada" is about the only national
anthem you can hum.

Did they check out all 205 or so national anthems? Including the dozen
or more that use the same tune as "America"?