US Elections

When Labor MP Joel Fitgibbon gave the inaugural Edmund Barton Lecture at the University of Newcastle in 2008, he voiced a not uncommon Australian complaint [PDF]:

It’s probable that the names George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are better known to Australians than the name Edmund Barton. Yet Barton was as leading a figure in the creation of our own federation, as were the three famous Americans in the drafting of the US Constitution.

A 2000 New York Times article details this national anxiety:

''It seems that Australians know more about the first president of the United States, George Washington, than they do about Edmund Barton, our own first prime minister,'' the booklet concedes, adding: ''But perhaps that's because our nation was created with a vote, not a war.''

[...]

Tony Eggleton, director of the centenary program, said focus groups that had been questioned about Australia's founding fathers were ''often embarrassed'' that they knew much more about American history than that of Australia and Prime Minister Barton, who headed the first federal government for three years. Mr. Barton's words, ''We have for the first time in history a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation,'' are much better known here than his name.

Similarly, here's Waleed Aly comparing America's political culture to that of Australia's:

Australia's political culture would never allow this. Edmund Barton is no George Washington, and no prime minister elicits anything near the reverence that Lincoln does in the US. Menzies may be the Liberal Party's touchstone, but no Labor prime minister would dream of embracing him as his ideal leader. Lincoln was a Republican, yet that has not detained Obama from invoking him over and over again. Lincoln's prophetic aura allows him to transcend party politics. Australia has no political prophets because no civil religion exists here strong enough to accommodate one.

Australians feel their history should look like the United States', or, at least, that the United States' history is an apt lens through which Australians can understand their own. Gillard's invocation of Pearl Harbor yesterday is an appeal to Australians to elevate an event in their own history by framing it as a natural equivalent of an important event in US history. We want America to act as a mirror: if we can see ourselves reflected in America, we might be able to use its understanding of its own history to enhance our understanding of ourselves.

Why do Australians do this? Part of it is due merely to US cultural hegemony: America's voice is so loud on the global stage that its history can't help but seem important even to those who don't share it. There's also the cultural and historical similarities between Australian and the United States that spur us to look for ourselves in America: Our common British origins, our mutual geographical isolation representing a cultural break from Europe, our shared subjugation of our native populations, our development of democratic institutions and open, pluralistic societes.

But I suspect that it is also a function of America's talent for narrative — its gift for telling stories about itself. The United States was born as a modernist nation, one that saw itself as set on a path of determined and inevitable progress. The American project was to achieve its manifest destiny (a westward expansion to achieve American domination of the entire continent), foster democracy and liberty, and to act as a model for the rest of the world (the "city on the hill"). America reads its history as a series of connected events: signposts marking its national progress. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor becomes not just an event, it is part of the ongoing American story, and has attained mythic significance as a result. It speaks to American innocence, and explains the US's rise from New World isolation to global superpower as being a byproduct of its defence of liberty, not any imperial ambition.

When Australians want to elevate the importance of events in our own history, then, we look for ways they echo American history. US history comes with an emotionally compelling and morally fulfilling narrative already constructed. Pearl Harbor is important to Americans, and if Darwin is Australia's Pearl Harbor, then Darwin must, by corrollary, be important to us. The outcome of this borrowing, however, is that we end up seeing our history as a jumbled version of someone else's: the same events imbued with the same meanings, but reconstituted out of context and haunted by the ghosts of another nation's story.

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Thanks at least in part to the Super Bowl, people in Indianapolis will wake up to the football off-season next week with a newly expanded convention center, a new central civic space, a newly revitalized low-income neighborhood, even a new downtown skyline. The Super Bowl, in short, has done more to catalyze change in Indianapolis than it does in most cities — and all of this has taken place over the course of a recession.

Anyway, I really like that Parks and Rec treats Indianapolis, with absolute seriousness, as a significant urban center. It shows it cares more about its characters’ point of view than that of its writers.

(Also, I really like the sense of American grandiosity that led to the country giving its cities names with the Greek suffix -polis, a geographical manifestation of the young nation’s fascination with classical thought.)

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When, a long while ago, I first realized that Americans sometimes used "America" as a normative adjective in this way, I struggled to work out the thought process behind this. It's part of the insularity that America is well-known for, something equally mystifying to a non-American. (But if you think "insularity" explains much in terms of America, you're being overly simplistic. Yes, America is an insular place, but foreign characterizations of this quality are more often instances of kneejerk anti-Americanism uninterested in understanding the society responsible for it.)

One way to try to understand the way Americanness is universal for Americans is to remember that non-Americans aren't as globally aware as we like to think. As an Australian, I know a moderate bit about Anglophone Commonwealth countries, and a little bit about South East Asia and Europe, but beyond that, there's much about foreign cultures that I have no idea about. But the best way I intuitively understand the all-encompassing, immersive quality of American society is to think of being in the all-encompassing, immersive Anglosphere.

I learned a few foreign languages in high school, so I can string together a couple non-English sentences, but I have no idea what it is to be a non-native English speaker, and no matter how much I try to imagine myself in a Chinese or Portuguese speakers shoes, I will never intuitively be able to grasp being not naturally fluent in the dominant global language.

And as an Anglophone, I use the adjective "English" in exactly the same way as James used "USian" above. When I comment on a feature of the English language, I'm almost never talking about a quality that distinguishes it from other languages. I'm just talking about the only language I've ever known.

And so, I should be clear. Just because I think the American conflation of the distinctive with the normative is abrasive doesn't mean it's wrong. In fact, when I'm in the States, I find the country's isolationist quality oddly seductive. It's strangely liberating when the entire world exists in the destiny manifested from sea to shining sea. It's not so much an embrace of ignorance as it is entering a world where different knowledge is necessary to function.

But, if you ever needed telling, I'm not an expert. I'm trying to feel out some odd parts of American culture that are hard to characterize, let alone reliably explain. If you think I'm way off-base, tell me. Even my best thought through ideas are sometimes nuts.

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1. There are also some other ideas in this sentence that I'm not interested in exploring at the moment, most specifically the "classist racist" bit.

2. This is not meant to be an aspersion on any real life Rutherford B. Hayes high schools, which for all I know may be universally excellent.

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The first reference to "Who Dat?" can be found in the 19th Century. A featured song in E.E. Rice's "Summer Nights" is the song "Who Dat Say Chicken In dis Crowd", with lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.[1] A common tag line in the days of Negro minstrel shows was: "Who dat?" answered by "Who dat say who dat?" Many different blackfaced gags played off that opening. Vaudeville performer Mantan Moreland was known for the routine.[1] Another example is "Swing Wedding," a rarely shown 1930s Harmon-Ising cartoon musical, which caricatured Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ethel Waters, and the Mills Brothers as frogs in a swamp performing minstrel show jokes and jazz tunes. The frogs repeatedly used the phrase "who dat?"

In the swing era, "who dat" chants back and forth between the band and the band leader or between the audience and the band were extemporaneous. That is, there was no one specific set of words except for the two magic ones.

More here.

*I'm usually very wary of Wikipedia, but this is too interesting to pass up.

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Because, really, I'm not usually a fan of any kind of sport. I make an exception for the NFL, and watching this game in a noisy Virginia sports bar, where even the wait staff would halt their work and cheer on the major plays, was an absolute delight. That this game was the kind that was won with a field goal prised in an overtime period the Saints gained only through a last-second Vikings fumble made it even better.

In two weeks time, the New Orleans Saints will face off against the Indianapolis Colts in Miami for Super Bowl XLV. Millions of Americans will tune in, many of whom will be watching solely for the big budget commercials and the cultural experience; I will be watching for the football as well. It's tough to see the game in Australia due to the time difference (it will kick off mid Monday morning in Sydney), but if you get a chance to watch, give it a look. The big budget spectacle of football is one of America's great and unique joys, and seeing the time-tested, superstar-led Colts face a New Orleans playing the franchise's first Super Bowl promises to be an excellent experience. I'll be eating chili, drinking a few Buds, and cheering on the Saints. Y'all should join me. 

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My American Thanksgiving was in 2004. I was studying in Washington State at the time, and in an act of immense kindness, my American friend Jessica invited me to accompany her back home to Kent, in the southern suburbs of Seattle, for the holiday. I was curious to see what the day was like, since after all, there didn't seem to be much more to the celebration than turkey-eating. Other Americans I spoke to, in the weeks leading up to it, had told me, with a surprising amount of feeling, that it was their favourite holiday. They said Thanksgiving lacked the commercialism of Christmas; that it was a simple and low-key celebration. I must admit I failed to see the point: there were 300-odd other days in the year to be simple and low-key.

So, apart from that and a few wryly humorous jokes about it being a celebration of taking the country from the Native Americans - the sort some Australians might make on Australia Day - I had no real idea of what to expect.

Jessica and I, along with a friend of Jessica's (whose parents lived in Japan, on an American military base), headed toward Seattle the night before, but we woke up Thanksgiving morning to a house on the brink of bustling with activity. The day was pleasantly languorous, and with the grim Pacific North West skies and late November chill offering little incentive to venture outside, we stayed indoors. The kitchen became a hive of activity; the turkey being cooked, the fixins being prepared. A football game hummed away in the background, and every now and then we'd turn our attention to that. (A spot of research reminds me that Indianapolis beat Detroit and Chicago lost to Dallas. Boo.)

The already gloomy day grew dark quickly; we were mere weeks away from the winter solstice and the sun sets early that far north. Jessica's relatives turned up steadily as the afternoon went on, and we crowded in the kitchen and living room sharing drinks and hors d'oeuvres. None seemed to mind that I was intruding on their holiday; each of them was friendly and hospitable, and acted as though I were a member of the family. When we finally gathered round the table for turkey and yams and marshmallows (yes, that did seem odd to me), then pumpkin pie, in the late-afternoon, we had drawn the curtains, and the conversation had grown cosy and comfortable.

As a holiday it was oddly mundane. It wasn't dominated by decorations or gifts or ceremony. It was kind of nice to experience a celebration with no greater demand than to enjoy company and eat food. I understood why so many Americans had told me it was their favourite holiday. For a society often derided as overly materialistic, Thanksgiving has a touching simplicity about it.

Of course, the day following is the famed Black Friday, that morning of shoppers wildly hunting out ridiculous bargains that marks the beginning of the Christmas period. But on Thanksgiving itself, none of that matters. It's about family and food and little else. In an America that can seem impossibly big, Thanksgiving is something that's managed to remain small.

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