U-S-A! U-S-A!

I watched about a total of fifteen minutes of the World Cup. (Stephen Colbert had every good line on America's apathy towards Soccer so I'm not going to try.) What I found disconcerting about the event were the crowd chants. They were all so melodious and joyfull. The Spanish "ole, ole, ole, ole" song could be a top twenty hit if you put a rave beat behind it. It made me wonder about America's chant:

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Christ, we sound like cavemen! Apparently, most international soccer (sorry, I mean "Futbol") chants are based on patriotic folk songs. Now, I'm not saying we adopt the metric system or follow the Geneva Conventions, but maybe we could take a cue from the rest of the world just this once? We have a lot of great music here. Perhaps we rework a Cole Porter or Muddy Waters tune? Run-DMC? Why not a round of This Land is Your Land?

On second thought, we wouldn't want to give the world's aspiring immigrants any ideas. Maybe we do a special version at the next big international event: This land is OUR land/ Don't you forget it/ We don't like so-ccer/ It's slow and it's bo-ring/...