Big Blogger Challenge #14 Patriotic Speech

I hate giving speeches. But there are only 2 of
us left in Rebecca's Big Blogger contest, so I
must speak to you on patriotism today. Please
bear with me. I am imagining all of you in your
underwear. I will make this speech because I
am an American, not an American't. Oh, and
I am supposed to include cliches and icons, so
don't think I'm making fun of our great country.
It's part of my assignment.

We are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe
free, the wretched refuse of the teeming shores. Yep! We're some
Yankee Doodle Dandies! And this great American woman is our
symbol of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What? She's
actually French? OK, let's move on.

I'm not so good with history, but my Uncle Sam told me a little
story. Seems it all started when we wanted to change the rules
of the official church. And what better way than to sail across
the ocean? Yeah, some of us wanted to get rich quick, too.


Seems as if we were still hung up on that rules
thing, because a bunch of us didn't want to pay
taxes. Of course that was a good excuse for a
tea party. The British were not invited, and
started a big fight. We revolted. Paul Revere
went for a ride, and Sir Francis Scott Key
wrote a song in the dark, "The Star Spangled

Banner," which was a lesson never to write a song in the dark,
because it is the hardest song to sing in the history of our country.
Some people preferred "My Country 'Tis of Thee", but since we
sampled the tune from "God Save the Queen," it was not a good
idea because the British might be touchy about us stealing it, and
they had just lost the war and all.

The father of our country, George Washington, could not tell a lie--
though he did vandalize a cherry tree. He needed the wood for later,
to build himself some false teeth. He also had a penchant for standing
up in boats, which was dumb because if he fell in the Delaware, he
would have lost his wig, and it was pretty freezing cold that day.

We got rich with tobacco, which is not really good for you unless
you are the one growing it. Abraham Lincoln put a crimp in the
tobacco and cotton industry when he abolished slavery, which
was the civil thing to do. We even had a big war over it called the
Civil War. That spawned one of our classic novels, Gone With
the Wind, and also a movie where Clark Gable said a bad word.

Four score and seven years ago....was 87 years ago. I don't
know much about this historical period. I think WWI had just
ended. Some presidents' heads were put on a mountain in the
middle of nowhere so not many people could see them. Not
their actual heads, that is just wrong. It was heads carved in
stone. I think a lot of people got depressed around that time
because they lost money in a stock market crash. Then they
built Hoovervilles which were cardboard box cities and ate
a lot of soup. For jobs they went out and built roads that we
still have today that are too curvy and hard to drive, but they
thought they were doing a good job at the time.

That brings us to around WWII time, which shall live in infamy
because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which outraged
us to have an an attack on our soil. We went through some
other wars with Korea and Vietnam, and that brought us to
the civil rights era, which was a long time coming because all
races and women should have the same rights as the white male
citizen. Some crazies didn't think so and assassinated JFK
and MLK. Now we all have rights and by golly we will tell
you that we do and we will sue you if you don't like it.

We are lucky to be able to pretty much say and do what we want,
worship as we please, and travel at will, unless we are convicted
felons.We are fortunate indeed to be reaping the benefits of those
who came before us and were not afraid to stand up for their
beliefs. As the bumper sticker says: America-Love It or Leave It.