Ashamed of the USA?! Media’s 20 Worst Anti-American Outbursts

The vast majority of Americans are spending this Independence Day weekend taking pride in their country as they celebrate the freedoms established by the Founding Fathers.

However, there are some journalists who are embarrassed by the USA. Some of them even seem to take pride in actually shaming the country.    

Over the years, the Media Research Center has caught journalists ridiculing and deriding America. The following is a countdown of the Media’s 20 Worst Anti-American Outbursts (as culled from the MRC’s archives):

 

20. Hope You Had A Happy Fourth of July, Too

“Oh say, we’ve seen too much. The Star-Spangled Banner pushes like a cough through America’s mouth and the twilight’s last gleaming is just that, a sickly flash above our heads as we ride unsuspecting in the bellies of sleek trains, plop to our knees in churches, embracing truths that disgust us.”
— Boston Globe arts critic and poet Patricia Smith in The Nation’s “Patriotism” issue, July 15/22, 1991.

 

19. Respecting Anthem = Racism

 

 

“Some of the words of the National Anthem are white supremacist….I think this is a country whose history is racist, whose history is steeped in white supremacy, and the anthem reflects that in its very words.” 
— Detroit Free Press writer Stephen Henderson on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 24, 2017.

 

18. Now Is the Part of the Debate Where You Should Dump on America 

“Governor Romney, Daniel Duchovnik [ph] from Walnut Creek, California wants to know, ‘What do you dislike most about America?’”
— Online question selected by The Politico’s Jim VandeHei to pose to the Republican presidential candidates at their May 3, 2007 MSNBC debate.

 

17. Liberal Radio Host: It Pains Me to Chant “U.S.A!” 

“As I’ve grown older, I find my ‘U.S.A.!’-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians….Missed in the ensuing red-white-and-blue hoopla, of course, is the fact that we are not so exceptional outside the Olympic village….We are not gold, silver or even bronze medalists when it comes to healthcare; sadly, we are 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortal-ity….If we do stand atop a dais anywhere other than at a sporting event, it is for military spending, carbon emissions and incarceration rates.”
— Colorado radio host David Sirota in an August 1, 2012 piece for Salon.com, “Don’t chant ‘U.S.A.!’ It’s liberal Americans’ Olympic dilemma: How do they root for their countrymen without being jingoistic?”

 

16. Ringing the Bells of Jingoism 

“The pro-American approach is one NBC rarely detours from. It is in the DNA of Olympic broadcasting. Networks around the world with the rights to the Games can toll their jingo bells when they please. And it’s easier to interview your own nation’s athletes, especially if language barriers exist. Still, there should be a better way to present these stories without so much American navel-gazing.”
— New York Times sports/TV columnist Richard Sandomir in an August 17, 2016 column.

 

15. Embarrassed by the Star Spangled Banner 

 

 

“I mean, when you think about it, it’s ‘bombs bursting in air,’ ‘rocket’s red glare,’ it’s all kinds of — you know a lot of national anthems are that way, too — all kinds of military jargon, and the land — there’s only one phrase ‘the land of the free,’ which is kind of nice, and ‘the home of the brave?’ I don’t know….Are we [Americans] the only ones who are brave on the planet? I mean, ‘all the brave people live here.’ I mean, it’s just stupid, I think. I’m embarrassed, I’m embarrassed every time I hear it.”
— Former CNN and MSNBC host Bill Press on his Full Court Press nationally-syndicated radio show, June 5, 2012.

 

14. Despising the Stars and Stripes 

“My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I’m wrong — the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we’re both right….[The flag] has to bear a wide range of meanings, from simple, dignified sorrow to the violent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry that has already resulted in murder, vandalism and arson around the country and harassment on New York City streets and campuses.”
— The Nation’s Katha Pollitt in an October 8, 2001 column.

 

13. Red, White, and Scary 

“A friend of ours, a prominent member of the ‘liberal media,’ wrote to the head of our kids’ school last week suggesting that students spend more time with the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star-Spangled Banner. The principal agreed. Our 10-year-old daughter asked her mother if we could put a flag on our car. My wife reluctantly agreed, but hasn’t procured the flag yet….My wife essentially shares our daughter’s feelings. But for her, the symbol of the flag was appropriated in her youth by counter-protesters who used it to deny the patriotism of the war’s opponents. Flag-waving feels aggressive to her.”
— Former CBS Evening News producer Dick Meyer in a commentary posted October 1, 2001 on CBSNews.com.

 

12. Taking Back the Flag  

 

 

“I decided to put on my flag pin tonight — first time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see….I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo – the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism….When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread. But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American….I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us.”
— Bill Moyers on PBS’s Now, February 28, 2003.

 

11. Happy Independence Day, America Sucks 

“We know what July 4th is. What about July 5th? After the fireworks, the music, the rhetoric of freedom what then?…What kind of nation does our flag fly over now? Not a less innocent one, because American innocence was never the truth. Not one less reluctant to go to war without a good reason, because we have foolishly credited bad reasons in the past. But now the nation lacks even that. As our President demonstrated last week, we have become a people who wage unending war killing and maiming our young ones and theirs without being remotely able to say why.”
— Columnist James Carroll in the July 5, 2005 Boston Globe.

 

10. National Anthem Is “Tough to Take” 

 

 

Co-host Sara Haines: “To Representative Crenshaw, who says, you know, this is the basic thing of an Olympian, to represent the country, Gwen Berry is representing the country. She’s questioning an American anthem that maybe doesn’t represent all people in the country.”
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg: “In the upcoming days, we’ll play you the American anthem and let you see what you think of it. Because there’s some stuff in there that makes it a little bit tough to take.”
— Discussion about Olympian Gwen Barry protesting the National Anthem, ABC’s The View, June 29.

 

9. Editor: I Want to Burn the Flag 

“If the U.S. Senate follows its silly siblings in the House of Representatives and votes for a ban on burning the American flag, I’m going to burn one. It never occurred to me to burn a flag — except in some flag-retiring ceremony — but just the idea that Congress has nothing better to do than spend time on this nutty issue makes me want to burn one.”
— Linda Grist Cunningham, Executive Editor of the Rockford Register Star in Illinois, in a June 26, 2005 column.

 

8. Let’s Shred the Constitution!

“The framers were not gods and were not infallible. Yes, they gave us, and the world, a blueprint for the protection of democratic freedoms — freedom of speech, assembly, religion — but they also gave us the idea that a black person was three-fifths of a human being, that women were not allowed to vote and that South Dakota should have the same number of Senators as California, which is kind of crazy….If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.”
— Time managing editor Richard Stengel in the magazine’s July 4, 2011 edition, which featured a picture of the U.S. Constitution going through a shredder with the headline, “Does It Still Matter?”

 

7. Post-9/11 Flag-Waving “Sometimes a Cousin to…