A Spanish Version American National Anthem? Stupid.

Although I am highly empathetic to the cause of immigrants, and support their using any form of protest to focus attention on their plight, I am extremely disappointed that someone in the Latino community chose to re-write America's national anthem, in Spanish - bad, but worst, changed around the lyrics.

Nothing gets a group of people more riled up, angry and hostile that when a treasured national symbol, such as our national anthem, is taken and manipulated and desecrated in a way it wasn't intended. We saw what happened when images of Mohammad were caricaturized in Europe and the violent fall out that resulted world wide. Any time a group uses a symbol in an inappropriate way it will lead to some repercussion in the future. In this case, we are going to wind up seeing a big backlash against immigrants, because although a non-Mexican wrote the Spanish version of our anthem, opponents of illegal immigration and those hard core individuals who abhor anybody who isn't white or can't speak English well, are going to lump all Latinos together and blame them collectively for this assault on one of our most potent symbols of national identity. They are also going to become that much more resistant, hostile, militant and violent towards immigrants and immigration policy. Nothing positive can come from this form of protest as it alienates those who natively live in the U.S. This act was short sighted and very poorly thought out. It is going to be the tipping point in the entire immigration controversy, and not towards the positive.