Pet Peeved

Pondering a Pooka's Pet Peeve: Our National Anthem at sports events.

This has been just driving me crazy for some time, and I still can't quite figure out the reasoning behind why this is done in this particular fashion, so I'll submit the argument for your dissection.

WHY, when performing the National Anthem at a sporting event, do 90% of the singers perform the number in such a way as to make it TOTALLY impossible for anyone in the audience to sing along?

Isn't this considered a participatory thing anymore? Are we supposed to just nod our heads and wait with hands over hearts for the singer to stop turning it into a Broadway show?

Instead of being able to join in as I was brought up to do, I sit and cringe and wait for the warbling to end, surrounded by hundreds of other people who are feeling the same lack of cohesiveness.

Instead of a show of appropriate patriotism, it's a one man show, and each man seems to need to try to outdo the ones that came before.

Or worse, the ones that turn it into a dirge. Ouch.

I know it's not a huge problem in the greater scheme of things, but if we're going for togetherness, why the heck can't we seem to pull it all together?