"i pledge allegiance..."
the beginning of NBC's telecast of the final round of the us open yesterday had a visual montage of american patriotism interwoven with children reciting the pledge of allegiance. notably, the phrase, "under God, indivisible" was omitted. dan hicks, the commentator, later read a statement that it was not NBC's intent to offend anyone and they regretted the omission. alright. fine.
as you might expect, there's been a lot of discussion on twitter and the blogosphere about this. atheists calling the religious dumb, religious people calling atheists un-american and heathens, etc. yeah. whatever. personally, i think NBC shouldn't edit the pledge at all. recite the whole thing verbatim or don't use it at all.
the thing that i don't get, and what bugs me, is when people back up NBC's stupidity by claiming that "under God" wasn't even in the original pledge of allegiance. it was added in the 1950s. okay. so what? THAT makes NBC's omission okay? oh, women shouldn't be allowed to vote...after all, the right to vote was only added later as an amendment. it's not as if NBC was reciting the original pledge from 1892. they were reciting the one we all know today. and the omission was a boneheaded move. simple as that.
