Saturday, March 15, 2008

I Like Americans

I like Americans generally. I really do, and this is not sarcasm. American bands generally have something that British bands don't too (there's a PHD topic). However, I'm sick of 'semesters' and 'malls', 'muffins', 'movies' and all the other language that we've started to use - and the attitude that patriotism and aggressive Christianity are OK, oh, and 10 gallon buckets of popcorn and...well, there's a list. So much is imported from the USA along with exaggerated respect for entrepreneurs and really shit telly.

When I were a lad America was big and fabulous - full of cactus and hookers and big trucks and Kojak and Easyrider and people making films about the Vietnam war. Meanwhile we had drizzle and working men's clubs. Thing is though, why are we still importing America now its not so much more exciting than here? America looks kind of 'small-town' - full of religion, support for 'our boys' and the death sentence.

I remember the moon landings (just). Real or not, it seemed to me that the planet stood still to applaud. America was doing something on behalf of the whole world (leaving aside all the cold war stuff) and we were amazed and impressed. The future was happening, the mission to Mars was scheduled for 1985 according to my Brooke Bond tea card album and this showed that we could 'fix things'. Now they're just being arsey about who enters the country, torturing people in boiler suits and making up imaginery money.

I guess America was always invading somewhere or propping up some mad dictator (it being our turn previous to them) but I still want to know what happened.

No comments: