That song again

They laid out the case against a former President of the United States the other day, and it made you weep for this country. The case was devastating. The evidence was glaring. And the half of Congress no longer pledging allegiance to America, but to a corrupt and half-mad king, pointedly ignored the whole thing.

Instead, like snickering seventh graders, they made a big show of reading or shuffling paperwork or otherwise symbolically yawning as images played out of a violent attack on the Capitol building by the mad king's lunatic minions.

The message was clear, and we got it: They couldn't care less about that. It's over, so no need to hold former presidents accountable. 

Bless their hearts.

Because, see, what some of their fellow ideological travelers do care about is the national anthem, apparently, and here we go again. A president of the United States whipping up a  a mob bent on insurrection doesn't bother them, but an NBA owner deciding not to play the national anthem before games in a pandemic-emptied arena?

Why, that's cause for true outrage. To the ramparts, mon ami!

Never mind, of course, that Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks hadn't been playing the national anthem before games since the season began the day after Christmas. Or that no one noticed or cared -- not even the NBA, which shrugged when Cuban said he was going to do it -- until a writer for The Athletic happened to mention it.

Then, of course, suddenly everyone cared, including the NBA. Like every corporate entity, it got all righteous about it only when someone trained a light on it and people started yowling. Only then, citing a previously ignored rule, did it order Cuban to reinstate this curious national tradition of ours.

And it is curious, when you tilt your head and look at it just-so.

As with many traditions, this one grew out of circumstance, not out of any bone-deep conviction that a patriotic tune should be played before grown men commenced playing children's games. The Star-Spangled Banner, in fact, wasn't even the national anthem when its playing was first popularized during the 1918 World Series. And it only happened then because the United States was at war in Europe, and someone thought it might be appropriately patriotic.

And yet ... it didn't become a pregame staple until America was again fighting overseas in World War II. And the NFL didn't start playing it before games until after World War II. From then on it grew into a ritual more reflexive than symbolic, something that happened before ballgames just because that's what you did before ballgames.

So now we sing it, never wondering why baseball or football  or basketball games are particularly patriotic events. And we have all these rules for it -- which is how it became controversial when Colin Kaepernick first knelt for the anthem to protest racial inequality, and many of his fellow athletes followed suit.

The Blob will maintain to its last breath that, given the almost reverent nature of the act, it's not the kneeling that really got so many people wrathy. It was why Kaepernick and the others were kneeling. Racial inequality, after all, is something a significant part of the American populace has never liked to think about -- or even to acknowledge.

In any case, Cuban decided the best way to handle the controversy over the anthem was simply to remove the anthem. That no one noticed for almost two months speaks volumes.

Look. The Blob holds no brief for or against the playing of the national anthem at sporting events. I actually sang it before a TinCaps game once. And for four decades as a sportswriter, I proudly stood for it, my hands behind my back in what the military calls parade rest.

I'll even maintain there are certain times -- the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend, or any sporting event conducted on the Fourth of July, for instance -- where it makes complete sense.

But to make it a cause celebre because it wasn't being played at a basketball game in January is absurd. Especially given the backdrop of what happened on January 6.

If it's been played at all at basketball games since that day, it should be played as a dirge.