Enough time has passed since Christina Aguilera flubbed a line in her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the start of last Sunday’s Super Bowl. Tens of thousands of opinions ranging from snarky to sheer outrage were expressed over the next few days. But Aguilera has moved on, as she should, issuing a short statement about it all.
A columnist/blogger for The Daily Beast, Clark Merrefield, asked himself the next logical question in his blog entry today. He wondered how many of those critics, or Americans in general for that matter, know the anthem and could do better? His purely random sample while standing on the streets of Portland, Oregon, yielded a surprising (or perhaps not so) result.
Of the 73 adults he asked, only 8 of them (less than 11%) could recite the Star Spangled Banner correctly. And that was just performing in front of him, an audience of one, never mind the hundreds of millions of people who were watching Aguilera.
What’s the takeaway? You’re going to make mistakes, though hopefully not in front of a hundred million people or more. But if it happens, just move on. Most of the vocal critics probably couldn’t do any better than you did, and likely would do a lot worse.
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