America Number One?

Re: Re: you don't get it

Apparently T-Mobile Sidekick sales are way up, despite the fact that Paris Hilton's account was hacked and her personal details made available on the web.

I wonder if Conrad is rolling in his grave...his empire will someday be in the hands of Paris and Nicky...

Cheers,
Mark

 

I've been both to Europe and South America and I suggest that America is number three at least when it comes to high-profile "slut tycoons". At least, behind Italy and Venezuela.

 

There is hope for us yet then.... LOL

Yes, of course, who could forget the original "slut tycoon", Donatella Versace?

 

Re: Re: you don't get it

That's what I tried to say, man. Stuff like this last line makes it really lousy paper. And it was mediocre to begin with.
Your country sure needs intelligent criticism, but it HAS to be... well... intelligent.
USA is actually still #1 in most of the important stuff, like GDP and, yes, military might. It is also generally free. Fix secondary education and healthcare, though.

 

I strongly believe we are woefully behind in many important areas, and we should be striving to fix those things (again, education and healthcare lead the list). As a liberal, here are some things that I really appreciate about America, which some other liberals often take for granted...

1) Equal Opportunity Laws. The best way to understand the importance of this for a just society is to go to a country where they are not present or not enforced. For example, most Mexican want ads will include age, gender and race (using special code words) e.g. you cannot apply for a specific sales job unless you are a female between the ages of 18 and 22 who does not look too Indian.

2) Lack of respect for public figures. Sure, Americans worship celebrities, but if they do something we don't like, they get pushed right off the pedestal. Public figures do not automatically deserve respect; they earn it (or work hard to con us in into it). In this respect I think we're slightly superior to most of Europe, even with their obsolete royals.

3) Multiracial society. We are not the only multiracial society in the world and it's interesting to see how other places get by... a few better, most much worse. One of our biggest handicaps is the insane "one-drop" rule that divides individuals into either "white" or "not-white" -- a rule that almost everyone ends up accepting. Keeping this handicap in mind our progress over the last century has been amazing. We have had plenty of large-scale racial/ethnic violence in our past history but this just keeps dying out as we become a more and more integrated society.

 

Yahoooooooooooooo!

Peace!

 

Obsolete royals

Let's see...mainsail topsail topgallant sail, skysail and royal, right?

 

Hi Tom57:

Me too. This is scary.

A parenthetical observation: the "love it or leave it" idiocy and the "I'm moving to Canada if my guy doesn't win" idiocy are fraternal twins in the lexicon of political stupidity.

Also, the "I really dislike America and here's why" rhetorical device and the "I better stick up for America" rhetorical device resemble each other an awful lot.

I am unsure that it's true that the greater the number of criticisms one makes of one's country, the greater one's nobly misunderstood patriotism. Sometimes bitch 'n' moan is just bitch 'n' moan.

The same thing applies to the greater the defensive boasts...the greater one's embattled patriotism setup. Sometimes a case of nerves is just a case of nerves.

We might all do well to remember that pop culture is awful everywhere--sorta like all folk music sounds alike and all folk costumes look stupid and contrived.

Sometimes I'm reminded of the old Peanuts line, "I love humanity. It's people I can't stand." Dunno why.

Have fun. Play nice. There *are* quite a number of really thoughtful posts on this thread. On both sides. And then there's this one.

Janko

 

Exactly!

 

Whooo! Jimmy and Uncle Janko. I'm converted!

Also, thoughtful post. I agree - the extremes are like opposite sides of the same coin, and it all sort of runs together after awhile.

I guess pop culture is awful everywhere - the nature of the beast. I suppose we've been blaming it for the downfall of civilization since there was civilization.