star-spangled

Just two games into the 2025 playoffs, the free-reed musical instrument has become the Kings’ unofficial postseason good luck charm — thanks to some memorable pregame performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” played by a group representing the Koreatown Senior and Community Center.

Kwanil Park, the center’s executive director, suggested that the harmonica group reprise its performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the game.

Canadian fans have been booing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before hockey and baseball games.

If one believed that the star-spangled banner flapped “o’er the land of the free,” then protest during its veneration – not against it, as was deliberately misconstrued – is precisely the affordance that the ritual symbolizes.

And after he was elected, Trump challenged NFL owners to release any player who kneeled in protest during “The Star-Spangled Banner.”