A solemn Zooey Deschanel sang the national anthem at the World Series on Sunday night. Colbert bait! Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Jay Caspian Kang wonder if it was "the least inspired national anthem ever":
What did baseball and America do to deserve this? Jesus Christ, what if this sort of pallid spectacle has come to represent our cultural arrested development? I’m not ready for this sexless sort of knock-kneed kiddie bullshit. I thought Fox would be our beachhead in unapologetic American bravado! The national anthem should be sung by someone with swagger, drama, a full-boom voice that stirs even the most numbed-out bro to take off his damn backwards hat.
Jason Heid, who attended the game, was moved by Deschanel's somber interpretation:
[I] loved the sense of melancholy with which Deschanel infused the familiar song. It felt almost like a funeral dirge … No, Deschanel didn’t deliver a triumphant version of the song, like this fantastic Whitney Houston performance [below]. But what she gave us was unique and perfectly appropriate to lyrics that were, after all, written during an uncertain time of war.
The Dish 