If We Cancel Kate Smith, We Must Cancel The New York Yankees and The Philly Flyers

Fox News is reporting that the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday removed a statue of late singer Kate Smith that stood outside their arena for more than three decades, the move coming two days after the team covered the monument in response to complaints about two tunes the “God Bless America” singer performed in the 1930s.

The ridiculous excesses of political correctness have now stretched all the way to Yankee Stadium and Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center.

Both the Yankees and the NHL Flyers have banned Kate Smith’s famed 1943 recording of Irving Berlin’s classic “God Bless America.”

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The Flyers — for whom the recording has long been a good-luck charm (Smith herself sang it live during the 1974 Stanley Cup final) — went even further: They’ve actually covered up a statue of the singer that stands outside the arena.

The Yankees have played the recording during the seventh-inning stretch ever since 9/11. (NYP)

The Flyers had covered the statue and suspended playing her famous rendition of the patriotic song Friday. The Flyers decision followed a similar one made recently by the New York Yankees, who for 18 years had played the recording during the seventh inning stretch. Smith’s statue had stood near the Philadelphia sports complex since 1987.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1120423159881175041

If We Cancel Kate Smith, We Must Cancel The New York Yankees

The Yankees have banished Kate Smith to the dustbin for singing silly songs. Let’s banish the Yankees for their decades of racism.

By David Marcus, The Federalist, April 23, 2019 :

It was announced this week that both the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Flyers would stop using their traditional recorded version of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” during their games. This happened after it surfaced that Smith had performed songs now considered racist during  during her hey day in the 1930s. The Flyers, with whom Smith is more closely aligned as the good luck charm for their 1974 Stanley Cup run, even removed a statue of her from the Philadelphia sports complex.

In a brilliant monologue, sports commentator Jason Whitlock broke down the absurdity of these moves. The whole video is worth watching. Among other things, Whitlock points out that the song “That’s Why The Darkies Were Born,” recorded by Smith in the 1930s, was satire that was also performed by black civil rights legend Paul Robeson. I hope Robeson, one of the most important black figures of the 20th century, won’t have to meet this same fate.

But I would like to focus for a moment on the New York Yankees, which is arguably the most important sports franchise in the world. The irony of this team cancelling Smith for actions she took almost a century ago that are only mildly problematic, while their own team refused to hire black ballplayers, is astounding.

Smith sang a silly song. The Yankees systematically denied qualified black baseball players the right to make a good a living for more than half a century. So why is Smith being exiled while the Bronx Bombers go along like nothing happened? The answer is that throwing Smith under the bus more than 40 years after her death costs nothing. It is the empty virtue signaling that corporate America prefers to reflecting on their actions.

If we must lose Smith — if her statues must be taken down, if her songs must be silenced — then how do we justify allowing modern players, including black players, to wear the uniform of a team that denied black Americans agency and personhood? Any fair treatment of this situation would require that the Yankee pinstripes be retired right along side Smith.

Amidst the controversy, Stephen Smith of ESPN chimed in to try to explain why banishing Kate Smith is acceptable. His co-panelist Will Cain argued that if we go down this road of dragging everyone who did something inappropriate nearly a century ago, who will be left? He even pointed out that maybe Barack Obama should be cancelled for his bigoted views on gay marriage, and that was only a decade ago. Smith thought he had an answer.

He said, “That’s pretty d-mn easy for you to say, because you’re not the offended party. It’s real easy for the group that is not the offended party to take that position.” Cain replied, “There will always be an offended party, Stephen A, and they’ll make that argument to you one day.” Count on it.

Smith’s deeply misguided point seems to be that if some group of people are offended — and it’s not entirely clear who actually is offended by Kate Smith — then their destructive desires must be entertained and acted upon. No discussion is needed, no context is required, no good works come into play. Just tear down the statue and throw the offender into the dustbin of history.

Fair enough. I am deeply offended by the fact that the New York Yankees refused to field a black player for the first half of the 20th century. Don’t tell me that’s just how it was. Don’t tell me it was the rule. Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers had the courage to break that rule in the 1940s, well before the beloved Yankees did. How can this be forgiven? How can we celebrate their legacy while Kate Smith’s is destroyed?

The only fair and just thing to do here is for the New York Yankees franchise to fold, along with all but the expansion Major League Baseball franchises that came into being after integration. We can replace them quickly with new teams, teams that never denied black people the right to play. If Kate Smith is being cancelled for her actions 80 years ago, then so must the New York Yankees be.

These are the rules. Well, sort of. These are the rules when it doesn’t cost anybody any money. These are the rules when we decide to deride the memory of a woman who achieved greatness at a time when that was very hard.

She immortalized a second national anthem, and raised millions to support the war effort in World War II. Yet she is a problem for singing a satirical song. But Joe DiMaggio is a hero even though he consented to outright racism that helped him secure his job. Let’s end the Yankees. Please sign my petition.

David Marcus is the Federalist’s New York Correspondent and the Artistic Director of Blue Box World, a Brooklyn based theater project. Follow him on Twitter, @BlueBoxDave.

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felix1999

5 years ago

The haters of the U.S. are slowly stripping us of our history and culture that forms our identity.

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Bill

5 years ago

Wait’ll everybody gets banned that posed for pictures with Louis Farrakhan.

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Bill

5 years ago

Wait’ll everybody gets banned that posed for pictures with Louis Farrakhan.

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R. Arandas

5 years ago

Talk about being anti-free speech. Remember the left’s faux outrage over that Baby Cold Outside song?

And yet many young leftists seem to love and embrace all forms of hip-hop and rap, despite many of their lyrics promoting drugs and violence and being hateful to women. Such hypocrisy.

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rsklaroff

5 years ago

i summarized the mood in philly…and beyond.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/kate_smith_should_be_allowed_to_keep_blessing_america_comments.html

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Larenzo1

5 years ago

The Yanks used to be my favorite team! But no longer I hope they do not win another game.

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Alleged-Comment

5 years ago

That video is the greatest rendition of God Bless America. I like the entire video and the introduction. I heard NO BETTER rendition.

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Drew the Infidel

5 years ago

Keep in mind that Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” was a centerpiece in the ’43 movie “This Is The Army”, a WWII morale booster featuring US Army Lt. Ronald Reagan. Her patriotism is beyond question.

And by the way, that same movie featured white actors in blackface, an accepted part of theater at that time.

Also remember the most infamous example of “collusion” happened when MLB owners were caught conspiring among themselves to hold players salaries down. Hence, players’ unions and collective bargaining to this day.

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Keith1941

5 years ago

Another day of more madness! While we’re at destroying things, let’s dismantle the Union Pacific railroad, at least from Sacramento to Promontory Point in Utah. And apologize to China for the people were killed building that thing across the Sierras. Oh, and what about Atlanta, Georgia…didn’t the Indians once own that land? And what do we do with Manhattan, “stealing” that land for $15 worth of useless trinkets and beads….probably just a bunch of cheap stuff from China. So glad I’m a senior citizen….not so many years to watch this madness…..

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created4el

4 years ago

Getting so tired of the Leftist faux outrage du jour! They can say whatever they want but the need to stop short of taking down statues and erasing cultural icons. That’s something ISIS and other orthodox Islamic groups do because once they take over they don’t want the subjugated society to recollect anything from their past that isn’t Islam. Proof of this is when people look at the Middle East and Africa they think it’s always been Muslim and the thought that these areas were either primarily Jewish, as in what was left of the former land of the 12 tribes of Israel just prior to Islam slaughtering the Jewish tribes that they did, or Christian seems odd.

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