This is one reason I like to scan the
"foreign" press.
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20000805/361889.html
Pass the ammo and God bless the U.S.A.
David Frum, National Post
PHILADELPHIA - The real action at an American political convention almost always occurs in the media zone beyond the hall. In Philadelphia, the press was accommodated in four vast tents, each the size of a large aircraft hangar, erected in the parking lots surrounding the hockey arena six miles south of downtown.
Fifteen thousand reporters made their offices inside these tents, which sounds like a lot, but isn't. Inevitably one encounters people one knows. On Monday, for example, I ran into the Globe's Jeffrey Simpson in a queue in the refreshment stand inside Tent 2. He was courtly, as always, but he looked distinctly ill at ease. I could hardly blame him. Democratic conventions are run in ways that make a Canadian feel right at home. Rigid quotas on everything from the number of delegates to the chairmanships of the platform subcommittees ensure that a Democratic convention is imbued with the same matriarchal tone that fills so much of Canadian public life. Generally about one-quarter of the Democratic delegates lead their local teachers' union, so the hall echoes with the preachy authoritarianism that Canadians know so well. Although the Democratic party is almost as successful as the Republican at attracting corporate donations, fewer of the Democratic delegates are personally affluent. Thus, much less of the action happens in private restaurants and clubs whose charges won't look good on an expense account denominated in 68-cent dollars, and much more of it in the lobbies and hallways.
Republican conventions, by contrast, are profoundly culturally alien for Canadians, and never more so than at that moment when -- as he has done every year since 1984 -- the country singer Lee Greenwood steps forward to sing the party's unofficial anthem, God Bless the U.S.A.:
"If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life,
And I had to start again with just my children and my wife.
I'd thank my lucky stars to be livin' here today,
'cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away.
And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land: God bless the U.S.A!"
From a Canadian point of view, there isn't a line of this song that isn't offensive. The things I'd worked for all my life? Imagine thinking of wealth as something you work for, rather than as a reward an unjust society heaps upon randomly chosen white males to the detriment of women and minorities! Start again with just his children and his wife? How dare he use the sexist and heterosexist term "wife" rather than "partner" -- and how is it that he's the one starting again? What about his partner's contributions to the budget? Don't they count as much as his own? Etc. Etc. Etc.
The real kick in the Canadian stomach, however, is the chorus. Let's just itemize the offensive content here: The troubling scanting of the deaths of women soldiers, the ethnocentric suggestion that Americans are more free than other people, the irritating insinuation that freedom matters more than things like bilingualism, the disturbing implication that it is "given" by fighting men rather than by benevolent politicians, and -- above all -- the outrageous announcement that the singer is willing to stand up and defend his country still today! With an unregistered firearm too no doubt! All in all, the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Commission would be well within its rights to shut down any radio station that sought to play such a song -- and the precedents of the Canadian Human Rights Commission would call upon it to investigate any musician with the temerity to write it.
I might as well make my own confession here. Call me a quiche-eating softie, but I don't like God Bless the U.S.A. much more than the rest of the disapproving Canadian press. The tune is too treacly for me and the scoring over-ripe. But I like it that these Republicans like it.
One of the things we've learned over the past eight years is that even the reformed, New Democratic party of Bill Clinton cannot consistently be counted on to stand up and defend American interests. Troops get sent promiscuously around the world and then hastily called back whenever things look risky. Missiles are launched when the president can benefit politically from them and then halted when his need has passed. Countries like Iraq are threatened with serious consequences if they misbehave, but the misbehaviour proceeds and the threat is forgotten. Free trade treaties are negotiated and then abandoned because the president cannot command his own increasingly protectionist party in Congress.
The Democrats' nerve collapsed in Vietnam and they have never recovered it. They opposed the Reagan defence buildup, they hollered for a nuclear freeze, and as Dick Cheney's presence on the Republican ticket should remind us, they opposed the Gulf War. What has been true since 1968 remains true today: It's the Republicans who are the party of American patriotism. And since it is that patriotism that continues even now to guarantee peace and security in the world, I guess I am going to have to swallow my musical misgivings and sing along with Lee Greenwood: God bless the U.S.A!
Copyright © 2000 National Post Online
"foreign" press.
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20000805/361889.html
Pass the ammo and God bless the U.S.A.
David Frum, National Post
PHILADELPHIA - The real action at an American political convention almost always occurs in the media zone beyond the hall. In Philadelphia, the press was accommodated in four vast tents, each the size of a large aircraft hangar, erected in the parking lots surrounding the hockey arena six miles south of downtown.
Fifteen thousand reporters made their offices inside these tents, which sounds like a lot, but isn't. Inevitably one encounters people one knows. On Monday, for example, I ran into the Globe's Jeffrey Simpson in a queue in the refreshment stand inside Tent 2. He was courtly, as always, but he looked distinctly ill at ease. I could hardly blame him. Democratic conventions are run in ways that make a Canadian feel right at home. Rigid quotas on everything from the number of delegates to the chairmanships of the platform subcommittees ensure that a Democratic convention is imbued with the same matriarchal tone that fills so much of Canadian public life. Generally about one-quarter of the Democratic delegates lead their local teachers' union, so the hall echoes with the preachy authoritarianism that Canadians know so well. Although the Democratic party is almost as successful as the Republican at attracting corporate donations, fewer of the Democratic delegates are personally affluent. Thus, much less of the action happens in private restaurants and clubs whose charges won't look good on an expense account denominated in 68-cent dollars, and much more of it in the lobbies and hallways.
Republican conventions, by contrast, are profoundly culturally alien for Canadians, and never more so than at that moment when -- as he has done every year since 1984 -- the country singer Lee Greenwood steps forward to sing the party's unofficial anthem, God Bless the U.S.A.:
"If tomorrow all the things were gone I'd worked for all my life,
And I had to start again with just my children and my wife.
I'd thank my lucky stars to be livin' here today,
'cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away.
And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died, who gave that right to me.
And I'd gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land: God bless the U.S.A!"
From a Canadian point of view, there isn't a line of this song that isn't offensive. The things I'd worked for all my life? Imagine thinking of wealth as something you work for, rather than as a reward an unjust society heaps upon randomly chosen white males to the detriment of women and minorities! Start again with just his children and his wife? How dare he use the sexist and heterosexist term "wife" rather than "partner" -- and how is it that he's the one starting again? What about his partner's contributions to the budget? Don't they count as much as his own? Etc. Etc. Etc.
The real kick in the Canadian stomach, however, is the chorus. Let's just itemize the offensive content here: The troubling scanting of the deaths of women soldiers, the ethnocentric suggestion that Americans are more free than other people, the irritating insinuation that freedom matters more than things like bilingualism, the disturbing implication that it is "given" by fighting men rather than by benevolent politicians, and -- above all -- the outrageous announcement that the singer is willing to stand up and defend his country still today! With an unregistered firearm too no doubt! All in all, the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Commission would be well within its rights to shut down any radio station that sought to play such a song -- and the precedents of the Canadian Human Rights Commission would call upon it to investigate any musician with the temerity to write it.
I might as well make my own confession here. Call me a quiche-eating softie, but I don't like God Bless the U.S.A. much more than the rest of the disapproving Canadian press. The tune is too treacly for me and the scoring over-ripe. But I like it that these Republicans like it.
One of the things we've learned over the past eight years is that even the reformed, New Democratic party of Bill Clinton cannot consistently be counted on to stand up and defend American interests. Troops get sent promiscuously around the world and then hastily called back whenever things look risky. Missiles are launched when the president can benefit politically from them and then halted when his need has passed. Countries like Iraq are threatened with serious consequences if they misbehave, but the misbehaviour proceeds and the threat is forgotten. Free trade treaties are negotiated and then abandoned because the president cannot command his own increasingly protectionist party in Congress.
The Democrats' nerve collapsed in Vietnam and they have never recovered it. They opposed the Reagan defence buildup, they hollered for a nuclear freeze, and as Dick Cheney's presence on the Republican ticket should remind us, they opposed the Gulf War. What has been true since 1968 remains true today: It's the Republicans who are the party of American patriotism. And since it is that patriotism that continues even now to guarantee peace and security in the world, I guess I am going to have to swallow my musical misgivings and sing along with Lee Greenwood: God bless the U.S.A!
Copyright © 2000 National Post Online
