New State Song May Yet Be Far, far Away

First of all, This Space wants to hear no fussing about the Legislature having better things to do than wrangle over naming a new state song.

There is no less silliness in that gripe than there is in faulting people for debating which team really was best after the college football bowls, or who would win if Steve Spina and Richard Reade met in the finals of the Small Town City Managers Extreme Throw-Down. Of course lawmakers have better things to do. So what?

Stephen Foster's legendary ode to the waterway he never saw must go; it falls to legislators to do the booting. More than political correctness is involved; even sponged of its original minstrel-show race-baiting, its lyrics, recalling idyllic life for plantation slaves, retain an ability to demean. Small wonder Florida's two most recent governors - both Republicans - wouldn't allow it near their official ceremonies. Besides, "Old Folks At Home/Swanee River" merits replacing if for no other reason than it fails utterly to mention Florida. No other state song commits a similar oversight.

Dwindling Opportunities

Not that Florida has all that many opportunities to trot out its state song in the first place. Horse racing's Triple Crown showcases two state songs and "The Sidewalks of New York," and there's not a dry eye in the grandstands. Before the engines roar at the Indianapolis 500, Formula 1 fans weep to "Back Home in Indiana," a jazz tune liberally lifted from the certified, "On the Banks of the Wabash."

Even before it fell into disfavor, you could scarcely hear a live rendition of "Old Folks" outside an elementary school's music appreciation class. Nonetheless, But that hasn't prevented some Floridians from getting their knickers wadded over the bipartisan change proposed by state Rep. Ed Homan, (R-Temple Terrace,) and state Sen. Tony Hill, (D-Jacksonville).

Part of that amending involves the possible identification of a homegrown successor. Last March, the Florida Music Educators Association launched "Just Sing, Florida!" a challenge to Sunshine State composers to write the next great state song. The committee has whittled the so-called best - which has us wondering where Rodgers and Hammerstein are when you need them - of 243 entries to three; online voting (at www.justsingflorida.org) will determine which will be written into the Homan/Hill legislation.

Voting concludes tonight.

Critics: Songs Sound Like Hymns

Critics of the finalists say they allsound more like hymns than soaring tributes to the state air conditioning made. I say they're two-thirds right. "Florida, My Home" and "My Florida Home" evoke the best of John Wesley. The other, "Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)" owes much to "The American Adventure" theme at Disney World's EPCOT.

A personal complaint: None of the three is Jimmy Buffett's "Migration," a prescient depiction of Florida's blessings and curses from the viewpoint of a Key West resident from 1974.

Not that any of the three is a lock; legislators may choose to let things alone, which probably would suit most Floridians, who have avoided the online poll by the millions. While this semi-issue simmers, I know we're all eager for the first TV journalist to shove a microphone under the chin of a presidential candidate in a couple of weeks to ask, "What's your position on Florida's official state song?"

America waits, breathless.