Search Results for: label/Jon Bon Jovi

College football begins tomorrow. The NFL opens the following weekend. My son Zachary has already played in two high school football games. The dog days of summer are over. Baseball, America’s pastime, might still be in full swing – but now is when America’s passion kicks off! (I’ve been flagged for excessive gratuitous sports-related puns!)

But whatever sport floats your boat, I do have a modest proposal; one I’ve been meaning to address for some time. In fact the seed for this proposal was quite possibly planted in my mind on July 25, 1990.

Where were you on that date?

Doesn’t matter. You remember it. Even if you don’t remember that you remember it yet. That was the inglorious day that comedienne Roseanne Barr screeched out the National Anthem at a San Diego Padres baseball game. Her irreverent rendition of the Star Spangled Banner set off a firestorm of criticism that plummeted her popularity as a person while her television career continued to soar to new ratings heights. What’s the saying? There’s no such thing as bad publicity – even if it is off-key and boorish.

My proposal really doesn’t have much to do with Roseanne other than the fact that she is just one of hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been asked to perform the National Anthem before a sporting event. [Read more…]