USMC to Rewrite Marine Corps Hymn
June 32, 2006
General Michael Hagee, the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, today announced that the Marine Corps Hymn, the oldest song in the U.S. armed forces, will be rewritten. Citing complaints and mounting pressure from various political groups, the Commandant noted the new hymnal would be uplifting, inspiring and wholly appropriate for the modern, multi-cultural world.
Attacks on the Hymn began soon after the Marine Corps forced Corporal Belile to apologize to the Council for American and Islamic Relations for his song parody, Hadji Girl. The Counsel on American-Latino and Latino-American Trade and Exchange, or CALLATE, sent an open letter to the Commandant urging that reference to the battle of Chapultepec be dropped from the Hymn as it was offensive to Mexicans, Aztecs and Spanish conquistadors.
That letter was followed by a harsh rebuke from the Honorable Order of Liturgical and Infallible Earthly Religions That Have Analyzed Numerous Theological, Holy and Other Understandings, who objected to the Marine Corps’s assertion that the streets of heaven would be guarded by Marines. The group claimed that the job would be reserved for UN peacekeepers who, unlike Marines, have certainly done nothing to warrant eternal damnation.
This prompted the United Nations Human Rights Counsel to weigh in on behalf of one of its members saying that Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi was now a U.S. ally and should not be reminded of past conflicts on the shores of Tripoli.
General Hagee said the new Hymn would be developed by an outside group of politically correct entertainment specialist. When asked why it was necessary to go outside the Corps to develop a politically correct song, he responded “we don’t have any of you liberal sissies in the Corps.”
It’s the Marine’s Hymn not the Marine Corps Hymn . . .