Obama: Only One Anthem

The Rocky Mountain News scored a chat with the nominee in waiting, Barack Obama, and brought up the surprise switch that took place Tuesday at the mayor's State of the City address.

In a phone call, the candidate told the Rocky: "We only have one national anthem. And so, if she was asked to sing the national anthem, she should have sung that. Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing is a beautiful song, but we have one national anthem."

The controversy has stirred Denver and lit up the comments sections of local newspapers and blogs.

Rene Marie, the focus of so much attention since her Tuesday performance, responded on the topic of whether her actions--in an election year featuring the first black candidate to (presumably) enter the general election--might actually hurt the candidate's chances.

"Believing that would be a serious overestimation of my influence as an artist," she said.

Well put. And now that everyone from the mayor to the governor to the presumptive Democratic nominee himself has weighed in on the topic, can we please put this thing to rest and talk about, I don't know, the 2,000 Marines just extended in Afghanistan, or the fact that Karl Rove is, in effect, overseeing the McCain campaign?

State of the . . . Anthem

UPDATE II: Gloria Neal offers another take on the issue, quite nicely.

UPDATE: I've been thinking about this whole thing a lot. The conclusion I've drawn, finally, is that I can see why many people are disappointed by the absence of the National Anthem from an annual, marquis event such as the State of the City address. At the same time, to borrow a phrase from a friend, the world is a big enough place--Denver a big enough place--to be able to work it all out.

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Courtesy of the Denver Post, here's documentation of our "meeting" with the mayor today (I took time off work to attend, so I thought it worth a blog post, at the least).

Most interesting isn't that you can see Jenna and me in the photo (left side, row 8, outside aisle, Jenna in pink top), but the mild kerfuffle, to put it nicely, in the 9News and Denver Post comments sections about the "Black National Anthem."

Of course, this thing has gone big time on account of the DNC coming in August. Michelle Malkin picked up on it at her site. And there's more snark at Slapstick Politics.

No mention of Denver's success using DNA testing to reduce private property crimes, nor the 4,000 Denver students enrolled in new child care programs this year, nor the 2,400 new preschoolers enrolled this year, nor the $15.7 million received by graduating DPS seniors on their way to college (and that figure before DPS scholarships were awarded this year), nor the fact that Denver boasts 30,000 more jobs today than the city did in January, 2003, nor that Denver features a new methane gas conversion unit at the local landfill.

I'm not looking to pimp for the mayor; I'll simply say I heard a lot of interesting things at the State of the City speech today (and yeah, I took notes). The alternative anthem? Surprising, but not upsetting, to my thinking. And Ms. Marie has a remarkable, beautiful voice.

Alright. That's enough of that. I've got to fact check those things the mayor said.