A Letter From America (The good and bad things to come from America)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	The good and bad things to come from America
Date:	15/02/08 (332 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Baseball, blueberry pie

Disadvantages: Death penalty and Alaska

I never did hear any of Alastair Cooke's famous Letters From America. I know they were good; I know they were from an English emigrant who fell in love with the United States. It's remarkable and sad to note that on March 2, 2004, at the age of 95, Cooke announced his retirement from Letter from America after 58 years, the longest-running speech radio show in the world. So with that in mind, it's with a certain reticense that I write about the offspring nation across The Pond, safe in the knowledge that I am a mere shadow in the footsteps of both Cooke and, well, quite frankly most writers, come to think of it.

It was only recently that I felt frustrated by the newly christened U.S. and A. courtesy of the ficticious reporter, Borat. Having contributed to popular culture: The Wall Street Crash, Prohibition, The Boston Strangler and Ronald Reagan's presidency along with hamburgers, fast food, American Football and Marilyn Manson, the country that the world loves to hate but also loves to love (but my baby just loves to dance, he loves to dance), also managed to initiate the sub-prime lending scandal, plunging the world economy into turmoil. Still, who am I to pass judgement following such a greed inspired debacle as that? Poor, vulnerable saps seeking home ownership were, allegedly, lured into fixed rate mortgages with unaffordable stepped increases in payments built into the deals, bucking the usual trend of long term fixed rate contracts. With the tidal wave of repossessions that followed as home owner after home owner gave up on their payments but only after a financial feeding frenzy for packaged sales of high profit inducing mortgage debts were bought across the globe in one of the biggest, high risk, sleight of hands seen since Donald McEastwood sold life saving Buckfast containing coloured water to the wave of new settlers, way out west. He never did get as far as Alaska but then he only had a fistful of dollars and a map that didn't feature land masses that far north.

I shouldn't be put off by these types of shortcomings, should I? Alright, there's still more things that I abhore about Americana like the continued application of the death penalty in several states, the spirit of capitalist greed that pervades the American culture and the rampant gun culture that makes so much of the U.S. a dangerous place to live. In actual fact, I remember visiting The Gold Coast many years ago and deliberately avoiding Miami due to my perception that this particular city was an outpost of lawlessness and a dead cert that I would be shot if I set one dainty, Brit foot in the flowery-shirted Hades of Crockett and Tubbs. Alternatively, we went to Treasure Island, harboured by the Gulf of Mexico, surrounded by the blue waters inhabited by manitees and dolphins and where the most dangerous thing was a golf shack owned by pensioners on the beach who may, just may, nod off in their wooden hut and not be able to rent you those crazy golf clubs to while away a stray half an hour or so.

Of course, there are good things to come from America. We have Bill Gates who revolutionised the world of computing with his Microsoft empire; baseball, that good, honest American pastime that's as popular as blueberry pie and icecream (has anyone actually eaten a blueberry pie in this dour country called England or anywhere else for that matter?) and New York, the city that never sleeps and you can't find an apple that defies the category of "big". I can endorse this by declaring that I really like baseball and have been to NY, falling in love with the place in the process. To be honest, Bill Gates may be a bit of a red herring, come to think of it. Oh, there's lots of other goodness that oozes from the land of plenty too. There's Walt Disney and his theme park legacy; there's Hollywood with its movie making industry. There's large cars with poor suspension and there's cowboys that kiss in the movies. There's rodeos that prove man's ability to cow the savage beast and there's the multicultural acceptance that's inherent in The Constitution. There's all these things that mark the USA as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world even if U.S foreign policy kinda forces that hope upon many and has its own, self interest at heart. Allegedly for America is the land of litigation, subpoena and counter-sue and a place where the CIA meet the MIB and fight aliens, whether illegal or from another world in just one more scene from a Will Smith movie.

As Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama look to break the race/gender mould in US politics, so it is that I ponder the multi-billion dollar merry-go-round that is the perpetual campaign for political office in that great country. Money that could be spent better elsewhere, perhaps, like on a system of healthcare that doesn't exclude the poor, like on a social welfare safety net that protects the vulnerable. All these things are mocked in media culture; just watch the subtext in programmes like The Simpsons. Come to think of it, yep, The Simpsons, and maybe in that dysfunctional family with a stable, moral code at its heart, those yellow-featured, cartoon caricatures sum the country up with an image it would like to own. Then again, Mr Burns and his run-down nuclear plant may be closer to the truth. Hmmmm.....Smithers.

Thanks for reading.

Mara

Summary: A Letter From America