The National Anthem and the Search for Someone to Blame

Sailor Sabol, trying to sing the Star-Spangled Banner

It’s difficult to identify just one problem with this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Orlando, Florida. The caricatured statue of former President Trump, half Golden Calf, half Bob’s Big Boy, comes immediately to mind. So does the stage that looks clearly like a Waffen-SS lapel pin. Yet I’ve found myself made uncomfortable by the attention which has gathered around vocalist Sailor Sabol.

You perhaps don’t know Sabol’s name. The teenage mezzo-soprano, apparently an undergraduate at the University of Central Florida, sang the national anthem to launch CPAC 2021. Within hours, recordings of Sabol turned up throughout social media, most decrying her awkward, off-key singing. Her vocal difficulties were compounded by her a cappella performance, making it impossible to find the right note once she’d lost it.

Unfortunately, judging by many comments her performance received on FaceTube and InstaTwit, this wasn’t just a case of an unprepared youth singing something beyond her range. The name-calling and abuse I’ve seen directed at Sailor Sabol has ranged from simply calling her amateurish and cockeyed, to accusing her of moral failings. I argued with one commenter who insisted she must’ve slept with someone to get the coveted opening-night slot.

I’m reminded of Rebecca Black who, a decade ago, became the nexus of Internet hatred because she sang a silly pop song. People blamed her, individually, for the decline of American Top-40 pop. The abuse Black received was even worse than that heaped upon Sabol, and included threats of murder or sexual violence. At the time, I blamed this on people hiding behind YouTube’s cloak of anonymity, and I still partly believe this.

But something worse happened with Sabol. She became the emblem, not only of artists without firm cultural background and rigorous training, but of American conservatism’s moral failure. Commenters, most using pseudonyms, said she proved the cost of defunding arts education in public schools, or that she was personally disrespectful and unpatriotic, or that she sounded the death knell of American democracy. All for a girl barely out of high school.

I’ve noticed this desire to blame individuals before. Faced with the manifold moral failings of the former administration, a massive dogpile of media pundits chose to harp on how the former President had trouble drinking water. The problems America, as Earth’s predominant socioeconomic power, faces currently, are so vast that it’s difficult to wrap our heads around them. So we look for an easy shorthand to make the problem comprehensible.

The other lingering image from this weekend: half Golden Calf, half Bob's Big Boy

The problem, though, is that these shorthands say as much about us as about who we blame. Jeering the former President for needing two hands for a water glass, serves to normalize ableism, a major problem in America today. And holding one teenager responsible for the moral septic tank that is CPAC, reveals that the organized Left has no better answer than base name-calling, like kids on a playground.

Watching recent politics, I notice an ironic gap between what the sides believe, and what they do. Conservatives believe in individualism, and see all groups, including nations, demographic subsets, and even families, as comprised entirely of individuals. Therefore, when millions of people do something—undocumented immigrants crossing the border, say—these are millions of individuals making the same bad moral decision. Which, paradoxically, makes it easier to blame the group.

Leftists, however, see human decisions as conditioned by systemic circumstances which individuals can’t control. We’re beholden to pressures of race, economics, sexuality, gender, nationality, and the kitchen sink. We aren’t necessarily helpless, but we’re limited. Therefore Leftists look for someone to fix the system, or someone to hold responsible for its brokenness. Which, paradoxically, means leftists heap praise and blame on individuals.

The very fact that Leftists often don’t bother to vote, except in Presidential years, speaks volumes. They want one superhero to fix everything—or, if everything turns to shit, one supervillain to blame. Entire systems, plagued with habits that cause the same mistakes to repeat, get boiled down to one individual. The President, or Betsy DeVos, or William Barr. Or a teenager trying to sing the national anthem.

The Star-Spangled Banner is notoriously difficult to sing. Better vocalists than Sailor Sabol have butchered it far worse. But the condemnation descending on her now isn’t about her pitchy, discordant performance. Leftists want some individual to blame for CPAC and its tarnishing influence on politics. But the group is too big and vague to blame. So they turn their wrath on one struggling girl. And reveal their own moral undercarriage.