O say, can't you see?

Ramparts are broad elevations or mounds of earth and stone which are raised as a defensive wall for the purposes of fortification. While I'm not sure if Christina Aguilera bothered to look up the word in a dictionary (or at the very least, Wiki it) before she sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, she certainly didn't get it right in her performance. Aguilera mistakenly replaced the line "O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming," with "What so proudly we watched were so gallantly streaming," which is not only incorrect, but leaves Fort McHenry quite woefully undefensed (which of course might have well have wiped out Francis Scott Key and his "Defense of Fort M'Henry," which has come to be the U.S. National Anthem).

Good singer; woefully incompetent military strategist

It's easy to mess up the words to a song. There are TV shows dedicated to getting the lyrics right and personal nightmares of my own that include singing the wrong words on stage and getting pelted with tomatoes and such. No one messes it up on purpose, of course, but I'd like to think if the NFL Czar of Halftime Shows (who I believe is Howie Long's less talented, less rectangular brother) went insane and tapped me to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the freaking Super Bowl, I would get the eight lines of the first verse of my country's national anthem correct.

There have been far more severely butchered versions of the song (you will remember Roseanne Barr's classic rendition at the Padres' Jack Murphy Stadium and Carl Lewis' heart-wrenching performance at an NBA game), and I think the common theme here is people who are not qualified to sing such a song trying to sing the damn song. Obviously, Roseanne wasn't picked for her musical prowess, but it's difficult to give a "humorous take" on the American national anthem without making people incredibly uncomfortable, and I don't think Ms. Barr is your best bet there, anyway. Carl Lewis won 10 Olympic medals for the U.S. in track and field events, but what is he doing with a microphone?

She couldn't even listen to herself

I don't care how many Grammys Aguilera has won, she shouldn't be singing the national anthem. This may be quite an Archie Bunker/Dana Carvey's grumpy old man thing to say, but I really can't stand it when people jazz up the Star Spangled Banner. The patriotism of the song is felt through the familiar march melody of drum and bugle and fife, not in the aria-esque ornamentation that Aguilera and other pop singers add to the song's melody. Besides the fact, as Roseanne could tell you, it's a very difficult and vocally demanding piece in the first place, and the true beauty that can inspire awe in a listening concerning this melody is to belt the damn thing out correctly.

Basically, give me Patti LaBelle or give me death. I guess Aguilera could do it, too (she certainly has a more versatile voice than the auto-tuned Black Eyed Peas performers at halftime), but forgive me if I don't feel a rush of patriotism when the singer of "Dirrty" steps up on stage and muffs the words.