9 Reasons Why No One Should Stand For the National Anthem

If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you may have heard of a controversy surrounding San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick - who has recently refused to stand for the singing of the National Anthem at a few games. Kaepernick has taken this bold stance as a means of silent protest against the treatment of African-Americans in this country. I, for one, stand with Mr. Kaepernick, but for a few additional reasons.

1. Standing is hard

If you had to choose between "standing" and "sitting", only a rube would choose to stand. Sitting is way easier, more comfortable, and less strenuous on my back.

2. Do you salute or put your hand over your heart? Or is that just for the Pledge of Allegiance? This is too confusing, I'm just gonna sit it out so I don't look stupid.

The last time someone was singing I put one hand over my heart and saluted with the other and James Tuccio pointed and laughed and then everyone made fun of me for the remainder of Shrimp Fest.

3. It's probably pretty racist, right?

Look, I don't know that much about the song, but the fact it was written in the 1800s means it was PROBABLY at least a little racist. Like, pretty much everything was more or less racist back then. We had slavery as a normal, legal thing - it's hard to imagine that this song didn't have some racist stuff in it. I'm not gonna look into it too much because that would be boring as hell (everything from back then was also super boring, in addition to being racist).

4. Sitting is way better

I hinted at this earlier, but it bears repeating: sitting is awesome. It's halfway between laying down and standing, so it's a nice happy medium that we can all agree is pretty great. To quote C. Montgomery Burns - who doesn't enjoy a good sit?

5. I could be missing important Instagram posts or Tweets

If you're busy paying attention to some extremely old song, you could be missing out on some really good social media posts. I spend about 7 hours a day meticulously refreshing Twitter as it is - why would I take a break from that to listen to a song older than the Beatles (aka "the oldest band in recorded history")?

6. No one can remember ALL the lyrics to that song

Whenever I listen to the National Anthem, I see people around me singing along or mouthing the words and I try to too. The problem is: the song kinda sucks and I can't remember all the lyrics, so I jump to certain parts too early or I just straight up mess it up and look like an idiot in front of James Tuccio, who elbows me and SAYS it was an accident but I can tell he did it on purpose.

7. Can't remember if I zipped my pants or not after I went to the bathroom. If I stand someone might notice my unzipped pants and my balls might fall out and then I'd look stupid.

My underpants are falling apart and I can't really rely on them to keep my balls in place - which compounds the issue of me being pretty bad at remembering to zip up my pants after going to the bathroom. There's like a 50/50 chance I remember on any given day, so standing for the National Anthem is just a risk I can't afford.

8. I'm actually banned from most places that would have it sung anyways

Most sports arenas, schools, and national parks have barred me from the premises for a variety of unrelated reasons, most involving my balls slipping out RIGHT when the camera is pointed at me and I'm appearing on the Jumbo-Tron and then I freak out and light a garbage can on fire to distract everyone but that actually just makes things worse and then James Tuccio shares the video on his Instagram (which has like 7.2k followers somehow?) and now I can't even go to Red Lobster without everyone laughing at me.

9. We could have literally any other song be our national anthem and that would be way doper

Listen, if it was a dope cool song like something from Green Day or Everclear, I would be so down for standing / moshing to it. But it's just some old lame song about THE LAMEST AMERICAN WAR OF ALL-TIME (the War of 1812, aka the war so boring the only thing they could name it after was the YEAR). Make our country's theme song something more awesome, and we'll talk. Until then, it's just some shitty dumb racist song that was chosen arbitrarily to represent our nation in the 1930s. Yeah, the Star-Spangled Banner has been our national anthem for LESS than 100 years. We can just pick literally any other song written by someone less racist than Francis Scott Key.

I respectfully nominate My Chemical Romance's dope song about parades (the most American thing of all):

Now there's a song I would risk exposing my balls for.

Source: www.collegehumor.com