A CAPITOL DUD

I have just finished watching, excuse my language and for lack of a better phrase, a huge Suck Fest on PBS.

It was billed as A Capitol Fourth : America's Independence Day Celebration.

It ran for one and a half hours.  The first hour and fifteen minutes was nothing but a concert which featured mediocre talent from the past and present that sang tunes from the seventies through the nineties.  

None of it was entertaining and there were no headliners which appeared in the performances.  I guess the entire tone for the whole program was represented by the melba milk toast, little known host, Tom Bergeron.  PLEASE!!!!!

Let me get this straight, to celebrate the 236th birthday of the United States we'll entertain a national audience with singing talent, no one knows and a host, most Americans have never heard of!  WHY?

The last fifteen minutes was filled with orchestral music that included Souza marches and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture intermixed with a visual background scene of a giant fireworks display.  Fine, the martial music is appropriate for the celebration BUT why would a piece of music that celebrates the Russian victory in defense of the French taking Moscow, have to do with our thirteen colonies in North America, separating from the control of England in 1776?

Why do we celebrate national holidays?  To remember seminal events in our nation's history and give thanks to those who sacrificed for us as well as to understand the experience in the context of the past and how it shapes our future.  So where was any allusion to historical events? 

There was none.

The Declaration of Independence was never mentioned or discussed.  There was no allusion to our Founding Fathers or reference to the American Revolution.  The significance of the event of July 4, 1776 was never related to any event that took place that was part of our nation's history or identity.

Has the July Fourth holiday just become a reason for a day off, or a reason for a barbeque, or a reason for a sale of merchandise or the cheapest reason for a mindless celebration?

It is a national disgrace that we as a society have lost our reverence for and our honoring of those who have come before us and who sacrificed so much. 

How sad, how very sad.

How about the following.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ..."

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Thank God, some of us remember. 

Thank you, to those of you, who came before us and have had the vision to create the greatest country on the planet. 

May God bless the United States of America.