I was five years old on July 4, 1976.

The American Bicentennial was a very big deal.  My whole world turned red, white, and blue.  The stars and stripes were everywhere.  The United States of America was 200 years old, and you couldn’t be conscious and miss that fact.

That sounds like a long time—hell, the country just turned 234, for that matter—but it really isn’t.  Our culture is, in a global context, quite young.

I’ve never cared to have any sort of national identity except American.  I’m neither European-American, nor British-American, nor Caucasian-American, nor anything else but American.  It makes me really sad that so many want to qualify their national identities with hyphens (and, too often, out-and-out antipathy toward the American half of the expression).  I’ll go so far as to say I think it’s a mistake.

When you consider the breadth of our “meltees,” we’re really the only true melting pot there is.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I love that so many people from so many different places want to come here.  I love that they (legally) do.  I love that they add their cultural traditions when they do.

“How great to be American, and something else as well.”

Indeed.

I don’t have any illusions about how I think it should go when new Americans arrive.  Bring whatever you like with you, and continue to do it (within the bounds of the laws, which you’ll almost certainly find are more permissive than wherever you came from).  But in my view, you’re adding it to the grand American mosaic, not keeping it intact and separate.  It’s its own thing where you came from.  Here, it becomes American by definition.

I know that’s a controversial view, and I really hate that. I think it’s become so in my lifetime.  When did that happen?  When did we collectively start staring at the ground and mumbling “I’m an American,” rather than shouting it from the mountaintops?

I read today that “melon farmer” was substituted for “mother fucker” when Die Hard with a Vengeance aired on network television.

I try to avoid butchered films on TV, but that’s funny.  It’s not as funny as Sheriff Buford T. Justice’s “scum bum,” but it’s funny.

Back home again from Indiana

We’re home from back-to-back family reunions (Lea’s mother’s family, Lea’s mother’s mother’s family) in northern southern Indiana.  Essentially we hung out with warm, wonderful people and gorged on country cooking for two days. I’ll tell you, I’ve never been a fan of sustained exposure to a very large city.  Generally I enjoy myself for about [...]

This aired on television for a while, sometime around 1990.  I thought the overdone take on the stereotypically unintelligible heavy metal song was really funny.  Still do. I hope you’re having a good weekend.

CNN host:

In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod story, Andrew Keen, Kyra Phillips, and John Roberts are all in a lather about anonymous bloggers “(saying) rotten things about people.”  (The former is an author; the latter two are CNN employees.)  Story here. For example, if I were to call Andrew Keen, Kyra Phillips, and John Roberts [...]

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