Monday 18 February 2019

and here we have idaho

Whereas many US states have adopted multiple official anthems coloured by one context or another—the majority sourced to eras not to be particularly proud of, New Jersey alone refreshingly of all the states and territories chooses to recognise none—though seemingly out of an embarrassment of choices rather than high-mindedness.
Others have waltzes, ballads, poems, state songs emerita attesting to the rousing horribleness celebrated that’s still too much tied up in the character of the place to let go of it altogether, marches and hymns. New Jersey, despite its diabolical native son in the Jersey Devil, does not have an official cryptid while acknowledging and taking ownership of more problematic symbols like the square dance, a patently racist contrivance rooted in no one’s cultural heritage.