n>The “Star-Spangled Banner,” we’re told, is compromised by racism. Its author, Francis Scott Key, owned slaves, and the poem’s third stanza includes the cryptic couplet “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.” I suspect Key was applying the phrase “hireling and slave” to a single entity, the British mercenary soldier, but the professionally outraged aren’t interested in a discussion of poetic meaning. Read Full Article »