There’s never been anyone like Americans, has there?
One minute, they’re rewriting the tax code in order to let the market decide–and then, after 28 years of that, the market decides what it really, really needs is for the government to take it over in a hurry.
American pop culture is often cited as the true cause of all planetary evil, which Slowhopes may have accused it of a time or two or over the years, but the deep, dark secret is that American popular culture is also responsible for creating our favorite movies, pop songs, many novels and plays.
For example:
The Godfathers, Goodfellas, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Tootsie, In the Heat of the Night, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Little Feat, Tom Waits, the Spinners, Judd Apatow movies, Marvin Gaye, Ben Stiller, Louis Armstrong, Lonesome Dove, Google, The World According to Garp, Huckelberry Finn, Continental Drift, Sunset Boulevard, Richard Pryor, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sideways, India Arie singing Heart of the Matter, George Carlin, Raymond Carver, Fargo, Manhattan, Lewis Black, A Streetcar Named Desire, Will Smith, Jon Stewart, Sidney Poitier, Angels in America, Death of a Salesman, All in the Family, Seinfeld, MASH, Cheers, Taxi, Hill Street Blues, The Sopranos, 60 Minutes, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Chris Rock, David Foster Wallace, Billie Holliday, Anne Beattie, Ella Fitzgerald, Meryl Streep, Wendy Wasserstein, David Letterman, Spike Lee, Pixar Films, Sandra Tsing Loh, Martin Luther King, This American Life, Tupac, Dog Day Afternoon, The Visitor–
We could go on and on.
Of course, the list of things we don’t like about Americans is pretty substantial too.
Cheney, Bush, Saw V, Florida, reality television, Guatanamo Bay, let the market decide, dumb comedies, sequels, drive throughs, outlet malls, real estate flippers, talk radio wingnuts, paranoia, fear, conspiracy, isolationism, tax cuts, gun owner’s rights, Karl Rove, Saw IV, the death sentence, wars of pre-emptive liberation, spreading democracy around the globe, Saw III, racial and religious xenophobia, the blockbuster mentality, torture, rendition, environmental denial, oil addiction, Saw II, hyper-violent video games, interstate highways, late-night World Series games, infotainment, the Middle East only responds to a strongman, too-many-people-on-the NFL-halftime-show-for-anyone-to-get-an-intelligent-word-in-edgewise, Fox News, and the original Saw.
Tuesday, Americans choose a new president. The choice reminds Slowhopes of the old Star Trek episode, where there were two Captain Kirks: good Captain Kirk and bad Captain Kirk.
Good Captain Kirk operated from that positive place, making choices based on being optimistic and idealistic and hopeful about people, places and what lay ahead for the good Starship Enterprise.
Bad Captain Kirk expected the worst of everyone he came across, and basically operated from the point of view that the correct course of action was to get them before they get you.
Ever since that Tuesday night in November, 2000, America has been way too in touch with its inner Bad Captain Kirk. For whatever reason, America got into a funk and couldn’t get out of it. Maybe that comes with being 300 million strong: if you set the ship on the wrong route, it takes a hell of a correction to turn it back in the right direction.
Here’s hoping America embraces its good Captain Kirk Tuesday night.
The fact that an amazing number of Americans are going to vote for Barack Obama Tuesday night is already a sign that Americans have re-discovered their good Captain Kirk. Last night at Slowhopes’ house, we got into a conversation about his line that his story could only happen in America.
How about Canada? we wondered.
The consensus was: probably not. Even though Captain Kirk comes from Canada, we simply lack the imagination to dream up a Barack Obama. For that story to be told, for it to unfold the way it has, in the amazing, improbable, joyous, astonishing, extraordinary journey Barack Obama has travelled over the course of his 46 years, takes Americans.
No one else would buy it.
Welcome back to the world, good Captain Kirk! Hope you plan to stick around for a while.
BTW, one of the guys who produced Saw and its four sequels is Canadian. He spent the profits on the Tampa Bay Lightning. Karma exists.
Dear Slowhopes -
I liked your provocative list of pop culture works–several of which do give us “enduring truths” (I’ve inserted a couple) — namely Louis Armstrong, JOHN COLTRANE, India Arie singing BROWN SKIN, A Streetcar Named Desire, Angels in America, Death of a Salesman, WIT, David Foster Wallace, Wendy Wasserstein, JANIS IAN … because they do lead us to challenge our way of looking at the world.
Yes, I voted for Obama this weekend, early voting at our local Senior Center. There was an article in the local paper (here in the South), in which a late 70s black man was quoted as thanking the Lord that he had lived to see a black man on the presidential ballot. Let’s not forget that in the mid 1960s, southern hospitals still had segregated wards …
Dear Slowhopes -
I said I did vote for Obama, but I thought this was interesting in this week’s New York Times Book Review. Jon Meacham says: “In captivity, McCain used to act out scenes from books and movies to keep his mind sharp. In addition to Hemingway, he loves the stories of W. Somerset Maugham, “The Great Gatsby,” “All Quiet on the Western Front” and James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, especially “The Last of the Mohicans” (he remembers the N. C. Wyeth illustrations).” So I guess I have to give McCain credit for having good taste in fiction. And I guess if he and Sarah Palin are elected, we Democrats now know what we can do during our four-year “captivity” by the Republican party …
(“How to Read Like a President”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/books/review/Meacham-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin)
“Ever since that Tuesday night in November, 2000, America has been way too in touch with its inner Bad Captain Kirk. ” Wrong year. Its was November …1980. Its been nothing but “govern to survive” at any cost since Jimmy left office on the 444th day of the Iranian hostage crisis. Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush. From Iran Contra to Iraq. With countless chapters in between. 28 years of moving sideways … if not backwards.