Kate Smith’s stirring recorded rendition of “God Bless America” is now deleted from the playlist at Yankees or Philadelphia Flyers games owing to racism accusations. Smith even sang in person on several occasions during Flyers playoff runs. The NHL team, which considered Smith’s singing, either on tape or in person, its good luck charm, has has even covered over a Smith statute outside the team’s home arena at the Wells Fargo Center.

Smith appears to be the latest example of someone from America’s past being judged on 2019 SJW activist standards. The result is in an attempt to erase someone from history using retroactive political correctness as the benchmark. At the risk of oversimplification, history is a story of heroes, villains, and those in between.

Moreover, Is it possible that the SJWs are also offended by the very concept of God blessing America, a land that they don’t seem to love?

President Reagan presented Smith, who passed on in 1986, with the presidential medal of freedom in 1982.

“It appears that social justice crusaders have moved on from targeting Civil War generals and are now aiming to Depression-Era ballad singers…The reason? Kate Smith’s early recordings, going back to 1927, have been deemed ‘racist’ by today’s excruciatingly progressive standards,” Legal Insurrection claimed.

As FS1’s Jason Whitlock addressed the Kate Smith controversy in an editorial on Speak for Yourself:

“…If you know anything about Hollywood in 2019 or in 1933, you know that Kate Smith did exactly what she was told to do by the liberal elitist executives running the movie and music industries…the people who blackmailed the Yankees into dumping Smith’s version of ‘God Bless America’ are not trying to clean up American racism. They’re sowing seeds of division and undermining American pride under the bogus pretense that they’re promoting racial harmony. No rational person of any race thinks eliminating a dead woman from Yankee Stadium improves race relations…a long dead white woman is held to a higher standard than any millionaire or billionaire black rapper…”

Watch the entire monologue below:

Echoing his FS1 colleague on his Outkick the Coverage blog, Clay Travis pointed out that Smith is credited with raising $600 million in war bonds to support the fight against the Nazis in World War II. She also traveled extensively to entertain U.S. troops deployed overseas during the war.

Along with Whitlock, Travis similarly asserted that “the songs, which are considered satire by many — that is, they existed to humorously ridicule racism in the 1930’s, not glorify it according to many – were frequently sung by famous singers both black and white in the 1930s.”

The Travis essay continued:

” Now I know it’s popular on social media for modern day social justice warriors to argue that current American politicians are Nazis, but even those people would have to acknowledge that it’s better to actually, you know, help beat real-life Nazis by raising more money than any other entertainer of your era than call people they disagree with on social media Nazis…

“I want you to think about this for a moment — what kind of person scours the recording history of a woman dead for over thirty years to complain about a song recording nearly 100 years old? Is that person a normal, sane and representative example of modern American life or is that person a pathetic loser crank obsessed with being a victim? I think we all know the answer….

“The Yankees didn’t have their first black player until 1955. The Philadelphia Flyers didn’t have their first black hockey player until 1974. Are the Yankees and Flyers racist organizations today because it took them so long to make these decisions?Of course not.

“Like every part of American society these teams have evolved.
So why are they continuing to judge historic figures by modern day standards that arise after their deaths as opposed to their own standards back in the past? And why in the world does anyone assume that by playing a popular version of ‘God Bless America’ that the Yankees or the Flyers are endorsing every statement ever made by the singer of the song in her life? Especially statements made nearly a hundred years ago.,,

“And you can’t cover up the statue of a woman who raised hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Adolf Hitler because a couple of emailers are professionally outraged over what she did nearly a hundred years ago, before she helped to defeat the greatest scourge of her era..

“Actions like those undertaken by the Flyers and the Yankees aren’t about making America more unified, they’re about tearing us all down and pitting us against each other…”