Hey Americans, how do you like our national anthem? You might've heard it in Vancouver, about 14 times.

A new trend is sweeping the nation: contemporary music with increasingly sexist themes is being heard from coast to coast, and little is being done about it. A hit song called “O Canada”, written by Quebecois rapper Calixa Lavallee in 1880, is spreading its message of sexist hatred across the nation. This song’s vulgar message was reportedly omnipresent during the recent Winter Olympics, and is now even in our public schools. I’ll give you a taste of this song’s misogynistic, sexist nonsense, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:

“True patriot love / In all thy sons command”

Filth. Luckily, OUTRAGE IS BREWING!

The Parliament’s going to “consider” doing “research through a Parliamentary committee” to see whether or not, maybe, there’s a possibility, that lyrics changes could be considered, to something more inclusive like “In all of us command”. In other words, nothing’s happening, and nothing’s going to happen. Stop frothing at the mouth about preserving our proud heritage, crazy-eyed National Post columnists ready to pounce. There’s probably no story here, considering that the idea of changing the anthem lyrics to be more inclusive is about 3 decades old by now, and nothing’s changed yet.

But still, let’s all get outraged!

Alright, who can we get to serve up some outrage… how ’bout, maybe a University professor, tee up a talking point, aaaand… here’s one now!

“The national anthem should reflect its population and Canada consists of 51 per cent women.” – Adele Mercier, Queen’s University Prof

[Now play this sound clip]

Hold up a minute, you mean there’s WOMEN in this country? When did THIS happen?

(You guys know that later on it says “God”, right? Like, in the same song? I mean, I don’t want to get you too worked up.)

Alright, this is a dumb, ancient argument, it’s the sort of thing they probably made junior high debate teams argue about in the 80s because (a) people get really fucking worked up about it for some reason, and (b) both sides always win, since if you’re anti-lyric-change you’re a rational sexist, but if you’re pro-change you’re irrational but inclusive.

I’ll outline all your possible dumb, smug-faced arguments, rating their validity on a scale of Smug Emoticons, represented as:

#1: ARGUMENT: Changing the anthem disrespects our country’s history and traditions. Actually, chump, the anthem’s already changed lyrics as late as the 60s, which is why old people look confused when they’re singing the anthem, because they still remember the old version (with a couple extra verses of “We stand on guard”, or something) they learned as kids. Plus, it’s debatable what the original English lyrics were anyways, and the English lyrics are just an awkward copy of the original French. It’s not exactly a firmly-grounded historical landmark of our people, is what I’m sayin’.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#2: ARGUMENT: A sexist national anthem reflects poorly on our country. Here’s a news flash: other than seventh-graders doing geography assignments on foreign countries, no one gives a shit about anyone else’s national anthems. You probably only know the US anthem from watching too much American sports, you know the tune of the badass Soviet-era Russian anthem, and maybe the British anthem as an imperial throwback. If you’re a real trivia buff, you might know a couple other countries’ anthems, with that information stored in the “interesting nonsense that might come up on Jeopardy” cortex of your brain. As you heard at the Olympics, a lot of countries have some truly awful-sounding anthems too, and pretty much all of them have outdated, embarrassing lyrics. The American anthem’s an unsingable drinking-shanty about the British bombing the shit out of Baltimore (if you’ve been to Baltimore lately, you’d probably think the bombing wasn’t so long ago.) The British anthem’s a tune so stuffy and old-fashioned that the only nouns in the first verse are “God” and “Queen”, two concepts the British are increasingly apathetic about. In short, no, the world doesn’t care about our anthem, since they probably have a worse one.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#3: ARGUMENT: If we start giving in to these fringe political-correctness types, what’s next? Easy, National Post columnist. There’s no slippery slope here. Even if you let the feminists win the anthem-lyrics battle (SPOILERS: they won’t), it won’t lead to some topsy-turvy ultra-PC country of your hyperbolic nightmares. Broads already got the vote. Your “If we let them change O Canada, WHAT’S NEXT” schtick is about as strong a point as American wingnuts saying “If we let gays marry, then we’ll have to allow polygamy and bestiality and incest and statutory rape!” No you wouldn’t, you walking First-Year-Psychology-course-lecture-on-logical-fallacies.

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#4: ARGUMENT: Harper’s just doing this as political posturing to appeal to female voters. Yeah, probably. But fuck, could you imagine a more miscalculated strategy? Your “base” is white, middle-aged male traditionalists, and you’re considering talking about changing our country’s national anthem to be more feminist? But you’re right, this is definitely some political shit right here: Harper’s basically trying to call the opposition’s bluff here. “Hey Iggy, you guys are all about that feminist junk, you wanna change the national anthem? No? Well, you’re sexist, because we’re considering doing it. Oh wait, you do now? Way to alienate average Canadians, we weren’t actually gonna do it!”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

#5: ARGUMENT: They’re not gonna change the thing, because it’d be a huge pain in the ass. THANK YOU, you’re making sense now! You’re right, it would be a gigantic PR mess to try to change a national anthem that we all have implanted in our minds. They’d have to waste all this money changing documents and putting out press releases, and there’d be a huge opposition who just say “fuck it we’ll keep singing it the old way”. We’re a stubborn nation by default, and we don’t like messin’ around with the norm – whether it be getting bent out of shape about Peter Mansbridge standing at his desk, or Torontonians still calling their concrete baseball-toilet “Skydome” after a good half-decade of it having a different name. Our stubborn laziness trumps all other arguments. Yeah, the anthem’s not as ideally inclusive of women and non-Christians as it could be. But it’s not that people don’t care about the plight of women. We’re just lazy. Your Female Editor, and every other ovary-bearing human I polled about this topic, agreed – the prevailing sentiment being “fuck it, I’m not relearning the song lyrics at this point, and no one else wants to either.”

ARGUMENT STRENGTH:

Well, that settles it.

Our national anthem’s sexist.

But, at the risk of presenting an oxymoron, our collective apathy is near-militant in its enthusiasm.

[Article: Globe]