Consider this a qualified approval for ordinary citizens chanting “Let’s go Brandon!”
The semi-approval comes with a hat tip to 1984 Duke University basketball fans, who proved there’s a form of virtue in cleverly cleaning up one’s act.
As most people are by now aware, college football games and NASCAR races earlier this fall were befouled by fans chanting the old F-U about President Joe Biden. Some of us old-fashioned types were appalled at the public use of language so vulgar, especially directed at a U.S. president. There’s nothing wrong with avid expressions of disregard for a particular president, but there’s a point beyond which the expressions can disrespect the presidency as a symbol for the nation itself. It’s a line no decent patriot should cross.
As most people also are aware, a NASCAR reporter several weeks ago ludicrously asserted that fans blasting Biden were instead yelling support for that day’s race victor, Brandon Brown. The “Let’s go Brandon” phrase quickly came to represent the liberal media’s refusal to acknowledge the anti-Biden backlash in real-world America. The refrain then became an ironic chant, scrubbed of the earlier profanity, mocking both the media and Biden.
In short, what had been growing ugly was transformed into something that remains a protest — sometimes a fiercely felt one, but with a welcome patina of fun and sardonic humor.
Short of obscenity, infused with something approaching satire, the “Let’s go Brandon” chant now sounds to these ears much more in the acceptable American tradition of welcome, rather than criminalized, lese-majeste. Here in this free land, government officials still rank below the people as a whole — public reminders of which, within reasonable, communal bounds, can be quite salutary.
The replacement of the F-word with the ironic chant also amounts to a clever form of self-policing. Allow, please, a reminder of a long-ago incident.
In 1984, University of Maryland basketball player Herman Veal stood accused of something in the realm of a sexual assault. When Veal entered the court at a subsequent game, students at Duke, known for inventively mordacious ways of loudly bedeviling opponents, crossed the line by throwing panties and prophylactics on the court of Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Cameron Crazies, as they were known, also were early enthusiasts of the unfortunate habit of chanting “Bulls***” whenever displeased by a referee’s call.
Duke’s then-president (a former governor and later U.S. senator), Terry Sanford, had had enough. He sent a letter to the whole student body asking all fans to keep their behavior clean at the following game against the North Carolina Tar Heels. Vociferous support for their team was good, he said, but not vulgarity.
The students, inventive as ever, decided to comply in their own memorable way. The first time a game official made a questionable call, the Cameron Crazies stood in unison and, instead of yelling about bovine expulsions, chanted, “We beg … to differ! We beg … to differ!!”
It was hilarious. And it got the point across while making it good, clean fun.
The “Let’s go Brandon” meme sweeping the nation is very much in that Duke student tradition of begging to differ. It’s edgy without being openly obnoxious, a step back from the line rather than a leap over it. In these United States, the open expression of political opinions has the advantage of being a good pressure valve. It lets people be heard without them exploding into violence.
Joe Biden may temporarily have the White House Rose Garden, but all Americans are free to beg his pardon — or to tell him that he needs ours.
