I saw a guy last night go on hyper monkey tilt and nearly come to blows with a kid at a local pub last night before the basketball game over this. The kid was playing with his smart phone and the older guy started berating him for "not showing his country proper respect." I personally think it's kind of silly to stand in front of a TV with my hand over my heart, but I get that others might be more sensitive than I.

Seems silly at a sports bar. Does he get up off his fat ass at home watching football alone?

Honestly my guess would be yes based on what I saw last night.

Roll tide imo

I understand that some people take this super seriously, but to each his own, berating someone else on account of them not being as stupid as you is just scummy.

Anyway, no, I don't, I might at a football (soccer) game or something, but not through a tv. Do you cry when someone dies on a tv show? Do you sing and chant when the crowd does?

ridiculous

America, **** Yeah! Coming again, to save the mother ****ing day yeah

At a sports bar it's likely I wouldn't be able to stand upright for the entire anthem even if I thought I should.

I honestly don't understand why the national anthem is played before EVERY SINGLE SPORTING EVENT in the US. I could understand it if the opposing teams were from different countries.

I was in Alabama once at a bar and I was shocked when before a Tide football game the crowd stood for the anthem. It struck me as kind of cool. It felt more like "isn't this great we are all together watching football and cheering for our team" than a big political statement.

If somebody stood up in the pub for 'God Save the Queen', I'd think they were taking the mickey.

Maybe that's just because our anthem is rubbish though. I'd stand up for La Marseillaise

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=617

I would be less perturbed at the standing business if we changed the anthem to something catchy or at least listenable. My top choice would the "What is Hip" from Tower of Power, but there are other alternatives.

Meaning

Tease or make fun of.

Origin

There are various forms of this: take/extract the Mick/Mickey/Michael, although the 'take the Mickey' version is most often used in print.

It is sometimes reported that the phrase originates as a variant of the slang phrase 'take the piss' and the the 'Mickey' refers to micturate. This seems rather fanciful and there's no evidence to support that view. It is now more generally accepted that the phrase came about as rhyming slang. 'Taking the piss' does play its part as the rhyming slang refers to a (yet to be identified) character called Mickey Bliss. So, 'taking the piss' became 'taking the Mickey Bliss' and then just 'taking the Mickey'. An early citation of the longer form 'taking the Mickey Bliss' would be useful here, but I've not come across one.

Taking the piss is reported as originating in the UK in the 1930s and 'taking the Mickey' probably came not long afterwards. The first form of the phrase in print - as 'take the mike' - comes from 1935, in George Ingram's Cockney Cavalcade:

"He wouldn't let Pancake 'take the mike' out of him."

The precise wording - 'take the Mickey' doesn't appear in print until a few years later. The earliest I've found as yet is in J. Henry's Who lie in Gaol, 1952:

"She's a terror. I expect she'll try and take the mickey out of you all right. Don't you stand for nothin'."

pvn and lou made me sad itt

Oh well, Roll Tide anyway /sigh