Let me be explicit. Right now, in this podcast, there's some explicit language.

It's Tuesday, April 23, 2019 from Slate. It's the Gist I'm Mike Pasca. The singer Kate Smith

recorded a rendition of God Bless America that was famously played before Philadelphia flyer

home games in the 1970s when the Broad Street bullies were on Broad Street for one. It turns out that

during her illustrious recording career, she put some notes on vinyl that were, by today's

standard, strictly speaking, totally incompletely racist.

Okay, it is not often that you play a song that was considered wholesome entertainment in 1931,

and you wind up worrying it needed a trigger warning in 2019. This song and another similarly

racistly tinged diddy caused some consternation for the teams that had been playing the Kate Smith

recording of God Bless America. When the new songs emerged, the flyers and the New York Yankees,

who play Kate Smith's God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch, were put in an odd

and uncomfortable position. Now, it's weird to talk about these new songs emerging. She was in an

extremely famous singer, and it's not as if her catalog was lost to the ages or something.

Anyone who cared to look could have found that she sang racist songs 88 years ago.

It would be as if in the year 2084, there was some Madonna backlash because someone found that

she sang a song called Crazy for You, and in 2084, you can imagine that speaking of mental illness,

that way will not be countenanced. So the flyers had a decision to make, and I thought this would be

one of those multi-day chewing and throwing in the backlash to the backlash, and the who's the real

race. Nope, she's out. She was out pretty quickly. The Yankees, next to even quicker, the flyers

covered a statue outside the stadium, a statue of Kate Smith, covered it with a tarp then removed it.

The Yankees decided to stop playing God Bless America, or the Kate Smith version at least

during the seventh inning stretch. I actually, upon further review, by the book, can see why the

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