I'm not an American but....

[PornoDoggy]

I don't like R. Kelly.

I don't like his music, and I don't like anything he presumes to represent.

It's still amazing to me, however, how many people are willing to get their panties in a knot over something so abso-fukin-lutley insignificant as who sang the National Anthem at a fucking boxing match, or how he sang it.

Like I said, I remember my old man going ballistic because Jose Feliciano didn't attempt to play it the way everybody else does almost 40 years ago. We went fifteen rounds over the Jimi Hendrix version too, btw. There was a similar controversy 20-some-years ago when Marvin Gaye sang it at an NBA event - playoffs or All-Star game, I can't remember which.

I have never understood why they play the fucker at athletic events anyway. Never understood the patriotic value of watching grown men hit balls with sticks, hit each other while running full-tilt carrying a piece of pigskin, or bounced a funny orange ball around a court that it far too small for them. And have you ever noticed the way an American crowd acts at a hockey game when the Canadian anthem is played? Oh, yeah - a lot of respect for other anthems indeed.

They can’t prove when the R. Kelly video was made. I realize that moralistic pornographers caught up in the heat of the moment can forget that we live under a system of laws that sometimes means the guilty escape justice – and the rich guilty escape it more of the than the rest of them. "The rich get off for crimes that poor people get convicted of" is about as newsworthy (or new information) as "dog bites mailman" or "politician lies." Only difference in the last 30 years are so is that justice has become color blind.

You either got the green, or you don't.

And please - has anybody been to an athletic event in, oh, say the last twenty fucking years? I certainly have, and I can guaran-gawdam-tee you that 50% or less of the crowd bothers with the custom of putting their hand over their heart, let alone removing a cap, during the butchering of the National Anthem.

I'm not defending R. Kelly. I didn't see the event, so I can't support an opinion either way.

But good grief, people - it's a fucking boxing match.

They cheapened the National Anthem by playing it there.