Owed to America

Jeff Jarvis is calling for people to 'name the exceptional things about America that make it great'. I kind of answered this question in my own way last year on the anniversary of September 11. As the links on my old site don't always work reliably, I'm re-posting it here below.

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Like countless other people around the planet, I'm thinking about America this morning. I'm thinking about some of the things America means to me. I don't need to be told (because I know) that there are also other sides of America than the ones I'm thinking about. I've known about them all my adult life: the legacy of slavery, poverty in the midst of wealth, Vietnam, Chile, the Contras and more.

On the morning of September 11 2003, this is the America I'm thinking about.

America

America is Hank Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. It is John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah and the Coen brothers. America is Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. It is Armstrong, Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane.

America is the Fifth Amendment. It is Martin Luther King.

It is Babe Ruth, and Jesse Owens at the Hitler Olympics; Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali - formerly Cassius Clay.

America is Tom Lehrer. It is Guys and Dolls, West Side Story and Singin' in the Rain.

America is Elvis, and Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly. It is Bix Beiderbecke; it is Thelonious the Onlious.

America is Mark Twain. It is John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.

Oh, and Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, Mary McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Richard Yates.

And Damon Runyon: 'Harry the Horse, Little Isadore, and Spanish John'; 'the race track at Saratoga, which is a spot in New York state very pleasant to behold'.

America is Catcher in the Rye and it is Catch-22.

America is Texas and New York. It is Chicago and Nashville Tennessee. It is San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC. It is New Mexico, Virginia, Wyoming, Omaha.

And America is Omaha Beach. It is the liberation of Paris, the liberation of Dachau; it is part of the Allied war which defeated National Socialism across the continent of Europe.

America is John Rawls. It is John Dewey, C. Wright Mills, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Walzer, Richard Rorty. And America is Herbert Marcuse - yes, Herbert Marcuse, Frankfurt School refugee.

America is Manhattan, Grand Central Station, the Empire State.

It is September 11 2001. It is Flight 93. It's 'Are you guys ready? Let's roll.'

America is the Grand Canyon and the Rockies; it is the Mississippi. It is Route 66, it's Maine to Albuquerque - jeez, it's all those names. It's one of the greatest of national anthems (with the Marseillaise); you hear those swelling lines, and if you don't feel anything about America, you're a stone.

America is Hank Williams, it's the Carter Family, it's Bill Monroe, it's Johnny Cash. And America is Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette and Emmylou Harris. America is Blonde on Blonde and it's Kind of Blue. It's the transcendent Bob Dylan, and the resplendent movie tradition, second to absolutely nowhere, and nothing, else on earth.

America is the Supreme Court and the Constitution; it's a political culture despised everywhere but exceeded nowhere.

America is a myth and America is a legend.

What a great country. No, I'll rephrase that. What a fucking great country.