Op-Ed
This Is Our Country?!
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The Absurdity Exhibition
As if we needed more proof of my nerdhood, consider my Monday of Spring Break. While thousands of college kids spent their afternoons laying on a beach in Acapulco, sucking down accessorized drinks, vigorously trying to bronze their pasty winter skins, I wandered around a museum that’s main attraction is a room consisting of 48 actual-size bronze statues of the Founding Fathers.
On Sunday my friend and I somehow concluded that the best way to show his visiting college friend — a Kansan — the City of Philadelphia was to take her to the National Constitution Center. This was a terrible idea. If we wanted to show her Philly we should have taken her to an Eagles tailgate where hundreds of drunken fans gather around a burning pile of Terrell Owens jerseys, not a borderline propagandist museum devoted entirely to the glory of the Constitution.
But I woke up Tuesday morning just in time to hop on the Constitution Center bandwagon as my candidate of choice and Man Crush in Chief Barack Obama was in the middle of delivering what is probably the most important speech of my lifetime in the same building that I visited just the day before. At that moment my impression of the museum went from “it’s okay” to “it’s pretty sweet.” Instead of obscuring our visit by telling friends, “Yeah we just went downtown and stuff — it was cool,” I found myself boasting, “Yeah we went to the Constitution Center. You know, the place where Obama gave that speech. Yeah. It was sweet.” Its like if Brad Pitt came out and said he loved Star Trek: the trekkie freaks would pour out of their mothers’ basements and into the streets.
Since that Tuesday my excitement has subsided. I saw the speech as a brilliant, sophisticated take on race in America that was impossibly deep for a politician. I saw the next president of the United States — assuming the war-mongering bullshitter Hillary Clinton doesn’t destroy the party by stealing the nomination, and the senile shade-ball John McCain doesn’t stop being really, really old — talking honestly and without peripheral motives about an issue that no one will touch. Yet the speech didn’t take hold as it should have. Pundits so desensitized to anything substantive couldn’t quantify it outside the context of the horserace. It’s almost as if the speech was too rich, too complex to talk about in eight minute increments. So self-obsessed commentators like the beady-eyed nihilist Pat Buchanan (whose attitude can only be described as menstrual) simply filtered out everything in the speech that was thought provoking and mature and nakedly real, and lamented Obama’s loyalty to his extremely loud, incredibly radical pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
This strikes me as really, really stupid. A presidential candidate talks about the root of prejudice in America and all these slow yuppies at MSNBC and CNN and Fox News can talk about is how women between the ages of 18 and 35 in rural Pennsylvania will respond to Obama being so close to such a staunch critic of America. We are a month away from a primary involving a candidate whose chief legislative achievements are failing miserably to bring about universal healthcare and helping to start a war that has killed hundreds of thousands, caused our economy to crumble and made everyone everywhere less safe and all we can talk about is the time her opponent’s buddy said, “God damn America.”
What is the root of this stupidity? Why are Americans so blindly patriotic and shallow?
Part of the problem lies within the very building where Obama gave his unforgettable yet fated to be forgotten speech — The National Constitution Center. As I said before, the museum is probably as cool as a museum can be. The exhibits are interactive without being jokey, the history is deep and varied and there’s even a section where Ben Stein is prominently involved; but the place is scary pro-America. It’s so patriotic it could be the lovechild of Toby Keith and that “This is our counnntry” Chevy commercial. There’s even a station about the virtuousness of jury duty — this is hardcore stuff.
One of the main attractions is a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? style theatre in which visitors are given a 20-minute speech called “Freedom Rising” about the glory of our country and the brilliance of American freedom. While a paid actor speaks, images of America are splashed across a 360-degree screen at the top of the theatre. The actor cringingly mentions America’s “unproud moments” before again gushing about our great nation. It was all very triumphant and when it ended I turned to my friend and mockingly chanted, “USA! USA!” but it really speaks to a darker American reality.
We live in a country of idiots who don’t have to question America. We can point to our superficial stability relative to the crazy brown people dancing around in turbans on TV and we can say America is the most free, glorious nation the world has ever seen. We can look back on our history glowingly and dismiss blemishes as “unproud moments” without ever questioning whether or not America is just a series of unproud moments.
So when one of the most powerful people in the most powerful nation in the world comes out and talks candidly about the enduring chasm in American life — race — everyone simply dismisses the deep stuff and stays on the surface. Pundits theorize about how the label “unpatriotic” will destroy the Obama Movement without even questioning what it means to be unpatriotic — without even considering whether or not our nation warrants the sort of blind patriotism we are expected to garner. A presidential candidate talks about the issue in American life and we are too dumb to listen. God damn America.
I support Obama...for the
I support Obama...for the president of Cuba!
I fail to find brilliance in
I fail to find brilliance in staying for 20 years in a church that espouses, among other things, the theory that AIDS was created by white Americans to kill blacks. I fail to find comfort in someone whose wife and father figure said that they had never until recently been proud of America and "G-D d*#@ America," respectively. This discomfort is furthered by the brilliant man's refusal to separate himself unequivocally from these viewpoints.
I also take great offense at the author's elitist dismissal of everyday hardworking Americans as stupid. In fact, it is the "elites" like this author who have swooned over Obama, who know less about their candidate's actual record of accomplishments (there aren't many) than typical voters. Obama has taken you for a ride. The views of Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama that slipped out represent his true nature, and he has rode your naive idealism to put him in a position of power.
This was one of the most
This was one of the most arrogant and egotistical columns I have ever read. As a freshman in college who hasn't even voted for President before, you think you are somehow smarter than all the pundits on television and everyone else in America. Keep up with this attitude and I'm sure you'll go far.
I also find it funny how you criticize Hillary's legislative record when your "Man Crush in Chief" accomplished absolutely nothing in the two years before he started this ridiculous campaign.
Hate in America; from America
Too many times our government label those with different views, opinions, and ideology as hate mongers to our sovereign country. One must define the word 'sovereign' in order to understand we are not sovereign. Our country has forced our western capitalistic ideology on any country we believe can help our corporations turn a massive profit. In countries without any assets or resources; we leave them to starvation or tyranny and sometimes both.
When we realize as a country that our policies of profit demand compliance of American imperialism for those we exploit, maybe we can stop the hatred delivered from America.
Reverend Wright's "Goddamn America" speech is reference from text out of the bible... bible text that stresses when a government is immoral it shall not be blessed, it shall be damned.
Feel free to research that biblical info and rid yourself of the hangover from your unnecessary spring break.
sincerely from an American patriot that is not satisfied with the American goverment...
uneducated
As a person who thinks, I was deeply offended by nearly all of the incoherent drabble that Mr. Manfred spewed onto the ninth page of the Sun. Nowhere in the column was there a clue that Mr. Manfred was educated in any way, let alone at an Ivy League institution. From what I gathered he had no more sense than any of the bloggers I find on-line daily, who write the same unfounded arguments between their shifts flipping burgers.
I will start with his comment on Hillary Clinton as a “war-mongering bullshitter.” Hillary Clinton has shown her distaste for the handling of the War in Iraq as long as anyone. And like most people in Congress, admits to making a mistake in authorizing the war. And just like Barack Obama, Clinton has voted for every war spending bill that has come before her. Yes, it’s true, every now and then Obama does actually cast a vote in the Senate, and for the most part they have been the same as Clinton’s save a few.
Mr. Manfred’s next statement barely deserves recognition as he refers to John McCain as a “senile shade-ball” who won’t stop being “really really old.” Now anyone who attacks the integrity or character of Senator McCain in this way only shows that they have no idea what they are talking about. But Tony Manfred does something even more profoundly idiotic with this statement. He also manages show the same intolerance in the form of ageism that he argues should not be shown in the form of racism. Incredible, I know! And what was this senile old man doing while Obama was making this speech? He was on the ground in Iraq walking the streets with General Patreus; he was speaking with leaders in Israel, France, and Great Britain. This old man has been doing much more in terms of mending America’s foreign policy mistakes in the past week than Obama has in his entire career.
The past 16 years have been characterized by poor foreign policy- Bill Clinton’s neglect of Islamic terrorism, and George W. Bush’s cowboy –like attitude toward, well everything. Do we really want another president without any foreign policy experience like Barack Obama? This trend does not seem to be working. But I digress.
When attacking Clinton’s chief legislative achievements, Mr. Manfred once again makes rash bold statements backed with nothing more than harmful rhetoric that is typical blind supporters of any candidate. Although some of Clinton’s policies have not panned out as planned, Mr. Obama has nothing to hold his head up high about himself. If minor ethics reform is all Obama can lean on (and as far as I can tell, it is), then does he not have a long way to go too before we can call him presidential material?
And to top it all off, I would not want to go to the National Constitution Center if it was not blindly patriotic. What would you like them to say? “Well America is good and all, but we need to be politically correct. So other countries are good, too.” Give me a break, Tony. If you say “God damn America” then get yourself a God damned ticket on the next flight out of my God damned country and stop filling up a spot at my school, because someone else might take the opportunity to learn something here in your place- like critical thinking. And if you do decide to stay, please start backing your columns up with substance and facts or else you might end up on the front page of the New York Times.
COURAGE AND THE AUDACITY OF HONESTY
So the "war mongering bullshitter" turns out to be a liar. Who cant remember if they were under sniper fire or not? Then theres the "senile shade-ball" who cant remember who the enemy is in Iraq and where Al Queda is and being trained without his sidekick Joe Lieberman giving him a whisper. I'll take the guy with the bad preacher anyday. Oh and American history on close examination is filled with heinous events so perhaps they Ivy League is filled with the "uneducated"