Only in America? WTF?
Not to tease you, my Yankee comrades, but seriously….
I’ll be the first to admit that Canadians have made a national sport out of self-righteousness regarding Americans. There’s one guy up here on CBC, Rick Mercer, who’s so self-righteous he’s almost a point-singularity. He became famous because of a regular feature he did called “Talking to Americans” on the rather “grandpa would find this really hilarious” show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
In his segments, Mercer interviewed Americans, asking them questions about things that dealt with Canada so that their answers would expose their awesome ignorance about Canada, the US’s single most important trade partner (that is, without Canada, the US economy would be destroyed). When Mercer went after public officials, okay… maybe fair game, although being asked questions and being ambushed are different things.
But when Mercer went after ordinary Americans, his mean-spiritedness from his editing-room bully pulpit was inexcusable. (Similarly, as much as I appreciate Michael Moore at his best, at his worst, he has distorted people’s responses through dishonest editing and omitted hugely relevant events from his films, as with Flint’s major protests against GM, organised by workers and Public Citizen staffers, for instance.)
Ordinary Americans are victims of an educational and media system that deprives them from a larger view of the world—they’re not the people who constructed that system. It’s also hypocritical, because I can guarantee you that the majority of Canadians (southerners who live within a three hour drive of the Canada-US border) know nothing about the vast majority of the country (the north), its peoples, its languages, or even the number of territories (was two, now it’s three).
Far more devastating an indictment of our national ignorance, you can go to twelve years of public school and never be required:
a) to read a single novel or short story by an aboriginal Canadian novelist (such as the work of Eden Robinson)
b) to take a single, dedicated course of First Nations histories, or
c) to gain even a rudimentary command of any First Nation language.
And furthermore, Canadians as a rule know nothing about our other North American neighbours, namely Greenland and Mexico. In my opinion, given the American example we criticise, we’re on even worse ground, since we should know better.
That being said, I’m curious to know what you all think of the phrase “only in America.”
Having consumed American pop culture my whole life, and having questioned surprisingly little of it until my twenties (for instance, I grew up watching School House Rock and other US educational cartoons; when I was about twenty-five, for some bizarre out-of-the-ultraviolet reason one day I thought to myself, “That cherry tree story about George Washington and ‘I will not tell a lie’ is bullshit!”), I absorbed without challenging the phrase “only in America,” and don’t recall challenging it until the Clarence Thomas hearings and ultimate ratification.
You may recall that Judge Thomas, after having been excoriated in the press (for a variety of good and bad reasons, but I tended to side with the anti-Thomas forces; Ishmael Reed has some fascinating counter-arguments), Thomas said upon news that he would soon be a US Supreme Court justice, “Only in America!”
The phrase struck me as so obvious it was actually stupid. Clearly, only in the US could one become a US Supreme Court justice. Duhh.
But the phrase seemed to imply, in a racially-charged context, that only in the US could a Black man (i.e., an African) become a supreme court justice. Of course, most of the 54 countries of the African continent and across the Caribbean, virtually all supreme court judges… and, for that matter, doctors, lawyers, dentists, engineers, generals, presidents, movie directors and laundromat owners are Africans (so-called “Black” people).
Thomas’s flag-waving was all the more absurd since he’d just been claiming that his enemies had subjected him to a “high-tech lynching” because he was “an uppity Black man.”
Both of those phrases speak to centuries of racial oppression and murder in the US, but what either had to do with Thomas is less clear (although Ishmael Reed, I think, was suggesting that White second-wave feminists were covert and sometimes overt defenders of the existing US racial hierarchy, so his argument is an entirely separate issue).
But now US Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen to weld that same idiotic phrase to his nomination, choosing a song titled “Only in America” as his convention anthem.
Again, of course, his use of the idea is self-evident; of course, only in the US can you be nominated to become a US president. But to see just how damnably faint is the praise, let’s go to the comments of a lady interviewed at the DNC on Democracy Now!:
Uh… except for the Kansas part, how about in Canada (as in my case, as a Kenyan-Welsh Canadian)? Or in England? Or in many other countries?
Let’s take it a step further. Suppose all these folks who use the phrase “only in America” to address Obama’s situation (including Obama himself) mean, “Where else but the US could someone from the despised and oppressed group stand one election away from leading the State?” I suspect this is what people mean, but:
a) they’d be wrong, and
b) their concept is a grave indictment of American injustice.
Why a)? Because Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, both men of indigenous extraction (particularly Morales) became presidents of countries in which indigenous people have historically been ruthlessly exploited and their needs dismissed with contempt by the Iberian and Mestizo populations. And how about Nelson Mandela? Or any number of presidents of African countries following independence?
Why b)? Because, given that Africans comprise about 13 per cent (says my friend, author Shawn Taylor) of the US population, Africans should have been 13 per cent of all US presidents to date. Out of 43 presidents so far, that would be about five.
Since there’ve been zero so far (and don’t get me started about Bill Clinton), that means the situation is nothing to brag about. Not even close. Obama’s position in this race isn’t anything that should bring Americans pride, any more than having someone not beat the shit out of you on the way to work deserves headlines. And I haven’t even begun to address how his pretty face is merely the newest branding of American empire and a nearly ideal weapon to oppose the newest iterations of the Civil Rights movement and the pro-democracy movement .
I’d love to hear your thoughts on your own reactions to the phrase “only in America.”
September 9, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I live in Florida, the state that can’t vote straight. I got to see the drunk Secretary of State, prior to the 2000 election, cheering on Fox Celebrity Boxing in a bar. It was Paula Jones versus Tanya Harding. Only in America.
Jeff
September 9, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Freaking hilarious. And kot-TAM but you’re a fast reader.
September 9, 2008 at 5:07 pm
While many nations have had heads of state / government who were of discriminated-against, minorities (India has had three muslims, and the PM is a Sikh, an ethnically chinese person was President of Guyana, etc.), I do not believe it is very common for an ethnic minority (or, for that matter, a woman) to attain a leadership position as a result of a majority vote of his or her country’s citizens. The only example of that which I can think of is Alberto Fujimori of Peru. And I think your examples of Evo Morales, Nelson Mandela, and Hugo Chavez are not analoguous, because in those countries the leader cited is actually of the majority group.
The nature of the sort of system we have makes it very difficult for minorities to achieve power, and if other countries had the sort of system we had, minorities would not find it easy to gain power there either. Partly, I guess, that might be our fault. If the U.S. cared more about representing minorities, maybe we would have a parliamentary system.
But I do think that electing Barack Obama shows a willingness by the majority population to embrace someone of very different ethnic extraction, a willingness that is not as much in evidence elsewhere in the world. Perhaps that sentiment might have been qualified too much to be meaningful.
September 9, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I get a bit irritated when it comes to trying to expose Americans as being these complete morons who don’t know anything. I always ask myself: how many hundreds intelligent people who knew where Australia was on the map did they have to go through before they got those twelve morons that didn’t? I think America is being intentionally painted as the “stupid country” when we’re really not that stupid, but such things sell and what sells is what gets on TV (like violence and sex).
As for the “only in America” phrase. I really don’t care about it. I hear it and shrug it off. It’s really a pointless phrase and has little meaning to me. But maybe it’s “only in America” that we Americans don’t give a rats behind about the phrase “only in America”… :P.
And, in regards to minorities and elections and what not: race has never been an issue for me, but religion almost always has. I won’t vote for McCain because he and Palin clearly are so influenced and controlled by their religious beliefs that they decisions won’t reflect personal decisions, but religious decisions. Obama might be the first black President here, or he might not, and I don’t care if he is or not. I just care if he’s a good President. You could be green or blue or white or black or Asian or African or Mexican or whatever, as long as you do a good job, I don’t care.
September 9, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Rakhan, you’re right, the situations aren’t completely analagous. I like your example of India, and Benjamin Disraeli is another. I should of course have mentioned the numerous French Canadian prime ministers, who hailed from the French faction vying for imperial control of Canada and which fell into poverty, backwardness and English exploitation.
In the case of Bolivia, Venezuela and South Africa, what merits comparison is the issue of power. The majority of the populations have a minority share of state power, wealth, status and weapons.
Yes, you’re right, Obama’s possible ascension to the US presidency speaks to numerous yearnings and values, but as I pointed out, it’s the opposite of the “only in America” (OIA) triumphalism, since if OIA were true, the US would’ve had 5 Black presidents by now, and India, Canada, and Britain would not have beaten them to the punch for minority members achieving state leadership.
September 10, 2008 at 1:46 am
It’s so great you can say these things. Only in America!
September 10, 2008 at 2:15 am
Just to muddy the waters, I want to mention something that a friend of mine told me and I have since confirmed: this same song was the theme for George W. Bush’s 2004 Republican National Convention. The Obama campaign could be using this song for a variety of reasons, but I have a feeling that their main one is as a subtle dig at Bush and the Republicans.
September 10, 2008 at 5:33 am
If the phrase implies that the USA is not racist, but everywhere else is, then it’s wrong. If your criticism implies that everywhere else is not racist, but the USA is, then it, too, is wrong. So the larger issue is a complete wash: racism is endemic to humans (but maybe not necessarily so). One thing I will say for the good ole’ USA is that we are very self-revealing, we discuss race all the time, and our (ahem) neighbors, instead of doing the friendly thing of taking our cue and going on to be self-revealing and open about themselves, instead mostly do the all-too-human thing and take the opportunity to pile on us, instead, as if we were the only ones with these sorts of problems. Ever had that experience?
September 10, 2008 at 8:19 am
Hey, Anderson,
As you can see in my original post, I’m only too happy to point out Canada’s flaws, including racial oppression, so “If your criticism implies that everywhere else is not racist, but the USA is, then it, too, is wrong” doesn’t apply to me. Bias and bigotry are as natural and avoidable as crotch-rot; both require attention and cleanliness for prevention. Does the US discuss race all the time? Ever watch *Friends*? *Cheers*? Bottom line: probably almost nobody spends much time devoting intelligent, dispassionate discussion to their worst flaws, but almost all of us use a variety of evasion techniques and self-delusion to cope with the burden of our fear, guilt and anger over our flaws. And that’s definitely a widespread problem, across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, our country.
September 10, 2008 at 9:14 am
OIA (already leeted, nice!) has always smacked to me of either nationalistic, willful ignorance or as a hipster critique of the same–Yakov Smirnoff style, only without the pinko connotations of “what a country!” It’s a meaningless little catchphrase as you accurately observe, your examples reminding me of http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000324.html. Oh, and DC creator Ryan North is Canadian, so since you guys are probably related–or at least know each other–could you tell him I said hello?
In my experience, we yanks are very touchy about race and how our country isn’t as bad as some places. At least, yanks of primarily Western European stock. There is very much a prevalent attitude of “look how far we’ve come” instead of “look how far we have to go,” an outlook that is as optimistic as it is counter-productive, and, in all fairness, an attitude shared by the middle and upper classes the world over.
Conversations I’ve had regarding race, gender, politics, etc. with furriners has tended to be a little more candid than with my fellow Americans, but maybe that’s just who I talk to. Online, I’ve found a lot of discussions that begin with open observations of both sides quickly degenerate into finger wagging and enough strawmen to give Edward Woodward a traumatic flashback. Or Nicolas Cage if you prefer, although I don’t know who would…
Been digging your posts; more of the same, please.