Digital Ink Los Angeles

Anyone who’s ever been to a ball game knows its call to stand and give praise to
Old Glory:

O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

195 years ago today, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem describing the U.S. flag still standing after a British bombardment. It was during the War of 1812, and Mr. Key had been watching the Battle of Fort McHenry from the British confinement he was being held in for one night. When the sun rose, he saw the flag had survived.

On any day, the same freedom that allows someone to burn a flag also necessitates their need to give thanks for that same flag.

In a nation that allows someone to speak to the eminent figure of U.S. government in slander (You Lie!) in front of 50-million people, what’s the essence of this freedom if not the emblem of this freedom?

The Star Spangled Banner is more than an anthem to commence an athletic event, it’s a testament to American liberty and the idea that, no matter how tough things get, that flag will still be there. Regardless of race, creed, religion, gender, politics, age, or income, the flag flies.

Jim Hendrix saw the Star Spangled Banner as a protest song. Makes sense, as the freedom it personifies requires active participation.

Watch Jimi protest his liberties and freedoms by letting his “freak flag fly” here:

“All that I care to know is that a man is a human being–that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
~~ Mark Twain, in Harper’s Magazine, September 1899

Mark Twain is a man of American letters who spoke to the profound paradox of man — at once a brave beast, divine and brutal, with ugly virtue and graceful depravity.

There’s a video circulating the internet with naked images of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, taken surreptitiously by a voyeuristic video-maker with access to Erin Andrews’ hotel-room peep-hole.

All dorm-room humor aside, and after the initial lure to search “Erin Andrews Naked Video” for the best-quality posting on the internet, there arises a moment of pause…

What kind of sick freak has the audacity to put his video camera to a door’s peep-hole and video a young woman in the privacy of her hotel? Not casting any stones, just wondering what this person does for fun? Is there an extreme likelihood that this voyeuristic freak wouldn’t know what to do with Erin Andrews if she invitingly opened her door and offered her uninvited guest to come in for a nitecap?

Quite simply, Erin Andrews is a beautiful woman living in an ugly world. She deserves better. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and Colin Farrell somehow found their sex videos on the internet because they had intentions from the beginning to capture these compromising images.

Maybe Erin Andrews can call up some of her NFL buddies with gangster friends and criminal histories — Michael Vick, Pacman Jones, Ray Lewis, Travis Henry, and Steve Smith — to exact some violent justice on this peep-hole pervert? That would be a nice professional courtesy, considering the way Erin Andrews has always been an absolutely professional and courteous reporter since she began with ESPN in 2004.