Kurt,
I am aware of your civic disgruntlement. However, here I sit listening to BRS N-49, aware in my heart that I am one of the ones ‘chipping away.’ (atheist, liberal, democrat, non-birther, essentially anarchist, diabetic in need of stable health care, pacifist, academic, etc.)

I shared your cover – “Coon Sits in the Presidential Chair” – with my graduate students. We had a vigorous discussion, contextualizing your blatant whatever it was by listening to Mantague. Some were unconvinced. (That is, they were unconvinced by Montague, that it was anything but a blatantly racist gesture.) They flipped through the catalog and found other less incendiary items that would have made a beautiful cover. They pegged your intent as inflammatory. Bear in mind that I was on the side of your defense. I love coon songs, but prefer collecting religious music, so I know better. The morals of youth are corrupted right out of the box, it seems.

But at the time I first became aware of your altered pledge, I thought, ‘what a great idea.’

Here’s mine:

We pledge no allegiance
to the many flags
of the disunited States of America,
And to Democrats and Republicans
who misunderstand:
It’s many nations, any number of gods,
with pitchforks and torches for all.

I have tried without success to publish this in Harper’s Readings with a fictional email trail between us to put the issue in a frame. So far, no luck.

Here’s the thing: it’s the fact that you and I can coexist in this nation, greet each other semi-civilly, and do business that makes this nation – I refuse to say great, because I think greatness eludes us – what it is. Any cursory reading of US history (or world history, human history) demonstrates that the rectitude you seek to conserve is utterly illusory. However, the diversity of opinion that we, between the two of us, represent is significant. We might face each other with pitchforks and torches yet (for the last merchant sponsored tea party quite got away from the merchants that fomented it – and here we are – USA!), but until then, and unless you throw a hissy fit for my uptake of your offer to communicate about this, I’ll keep buying (or trying to buy) your records. I’ll keep wondering, all the while, how a man of your gifts can keep soaking in cultural history and think we’ve lost ground. Isn’t Rap music one ‘coon song’ after another, made either by actual African Americans, or emulators! All you can really say, is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So relax.

BTW: interpreting the Constitution is essential, because it is over 200 years old! Even the nature of speech has changed in that time.

I’m just sayin, dude.