As many of you know, Marc Anthony was the target of some ugly racist attacks when he sang "God Bless America" at the MLB All-Star Game. In case you missed it, Brainwrap got a sample of some of the uglier tweets here.
Well, Anthony made what may be his first public comments on the issue on this morning's Today show. While touting his new album, "3.0," Anthony took down the haters by saying in so many words, "I'm a real American--and damned proud of it.".
(H)e e was more serious in responding to (Matt) Lauer's question about Anthony's performance at Major League Baseball's All-Star Game on July 16, where he sang "God Bless America" and surprisingly drew some criticism on Twitter and the Internet, with some non-fans who apparently didn't think he was "qualified" to sing that famous anthem.
"If I'm not qualified, I don't know who is," said Anthony. "I was born and raised in New York; I'm an American; I'm Puerto Rican. And for those who don't know, Puerto Rico is a territory of the US to start with.
"But if you think about it," he added astutely, "Irving Berlin was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who wrote 'God Bless America.' Just think about that for one second." (Berlin was born in modern-day Belarus, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire.)
Well, well. That little fact may have escaped the knuckle-draggers from last week. By their definition, Berlin wasn't really an American either. Great takedown.