I am not Canadian, and believe you me, I am extremely grateful for that. But even I think that messing with their national anthem, or any nation’s national anthem, is an extremely low blow. Enter one Rufus Wainwright, a notable Canadian-American musician and singer. He is under fire from his fellow hosers for tweaking the Canadian anthem to suit his political agenda.
We all remember President Donald Trump’s tongue-in-cheek claim that he would make our neighbor our 51st state. Clearly, that was a joke. His first priority would be to make Puerto Rico our newest state, but they don’t deserve that honor. We should just sell them off. But I digress. Wainwright, like most Canadians, did not take kindly to Trump’s joke.
At the World Series game on Wednesday night, he slightly changed the words and in so doing, he enraged both Canadians and Americans alike.
The lyrics should go: “…in all our sons’ command.” Instead, he sang, and off key I might add, “…that only us command.” I’m not sure if that’s grammatically correct, even given that Canadians speak UK English, and, some places, French. If he wanted to change the lyrics and make it count, he should have sang, “that only we command.” But that’s not the point, I guess.
Watching the footage of the disaster, I noticed no visible reaction from the spectators. Maybe it didn’t sink in right away. But the fact of the matter is that he did sing it and, again, rather poorly. I have no singing experience to speak of except for one church performance as a child and in the shower, but I believe that even I could have done a better job. And I wouldn’t have changed the lyrics!
Wainwright clearly had an agenda and he chose to act upon that. Look, I understand how he and all Canadians might be offended by Trump’s joke, but modifying his own country’s national anthem was a disrespectful and selfish thing to do. And look where it got him: he’s now Canadians most hated man.
I just can’t understand how Wainright is considered a musician. If that’s how he normally sings, then he’s a horrible, horrible singer. If that performance was an aberration, then he at the very least is guilty of being a scumbag of the highest order. It’s one thing to disrespect another country’s anthem, but he went full retard by butchering his own country’s anthem.
To any Canadian reading this, first, I’m sorry that you’re Canadian, but don’t even think about sending him over here to the United States. We’ll send him over to North Korea, right where his sort belongs!