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Edition 2009 |
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EYE ON EUROPE |
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A DYSFUNCTIONAL NATION AT HALLOWEEN, 2009  A typical American yard display for the Halloween season. This may seem ghoulish, but many were worse. |
A dead pensioner, a dead
puppy and a dead hoax
of TheColumnists.com
BORDEAUX, France
A visit to the United States last week left me dizzy with repeated bouts of culture clash. This was my country? I recognize it less with each visit.
Strange feelings for a Midwestern-born adopted European, but it is typical of reactions foreigners experience touring the U.S. these days. The entire nation seems relentlessly infantile.
The first smack in the face for me was the extraordinary expense and effort devoted to Halloween decorations on suburban homes--giant spiders climbing around on one family’s roof (dad is an engineer), bloody decapitations on front lawns, ghosts floating about. It’s like Christmas displays but with a twist.
Along the road to the local grade school in a Boston suburb, one jolly family strung up a life-like dummy in a tree to frighten the neighbors. A 9-year-old girl of my acquaintance assured me she was not bothered by it, however. “People don’t get hanged from trees in their front yard around here,” she said, adding with a wink, “only in Mississippi.”
I wondered what an innocent gamine from Bordeaux might have made of it.
The ghoulishness doesn’t always end with a giggle, however. The Los Angeles bureau of The New York Times reported a street scene a bit more macabre. The patio furniture on a balcony was draped with a life-like body, its torso across a small table. After three days of gawking, passers-by investigated and discovered it was the real dead body of a pensioner with a bullet hole in his eye socket.
“Halloween is not just for kids,” I kept hearing. Is this what they meant?
Simultaneous with the Halloween celebrations was a hoax that transfixed the nation. As Pakistan and Afghanistan teetered and tottered, millions of Americans chose instead to follow the accidental release of a tacky helium-filled balloon that might have been carrying a 6-year-old boy named Falcon high above the Colorado moonscape. News helicopters chased it down and found it empty. Was Falcon dead?
The saga continued for another day until Falcon emerged from his father’s garage unhurt. The nation heaved a sigh of relief. Until, that is, the father was outed as a publicity-seeker and hoaxster. This breathed new life into the story, with several peripheral characters--policemen, social workers, a body language expert and of course lawyers--elbowing their way in front of the cameras.
Rarely have I seen the media pander to America’s inner child to such an extent.
The shock treatment continued daily. As a part-time European I found it troubling to watch children glued to video clips and games of great violence. “NASCAR’s Biggest Crash” video on YouTube has attracted more than 1,200,000 views. When more juice is needed, there is always “NASCAR’s Worst Crashes”. Background noise included “Who Let the Dogs Out”,” which the kids sing along with as cars skid, plane, flip and burst into flame.
Some of the child focus is healthy, at least in theory. Parents sacrifice their weekends and free after-school time to ensure that their child excels in some sport - any sport. One couple worried so much about their son’s progress that they hired a neighbor boy to teach their child the elements of basketball at $15 an hour.
“When I was a kid, lacking a sport, or at least the ability to twirl a baton, was social death,” one Boston area mother told me. It still is.
She recalled overhearing some of the alpha males at a dinner party ridiculing a 4-year-old boy who couldn’t run a soccer ball downfield like David Beckham. The poor kid was spotted picking dandelions on the field. At 4, that was the end of his short career in the “beautiful game”, and Loserville for him.
It’s hard to compute the trends when you have such disparate data. American children, young and old, sent each other 740 billion text messages in the first two quarters of this year. Meanwhile, 18 percent more women are getting arrested driving drunk than five years ago. Were they texting at the time? Stir in the news that Marge Simpson, a cartoon character, is prancing nude in the pages of Playboy, and your head spins.
I think author Michael Chabon gets it right in his new collection of essays “Manhood for Amateurs” when he argues that the American imagination today is fueled by movies, television, comic book heroes and rock music.
CNN must bear some of the responsibility for perpetuating the national dumbdown. As a terrorist plot was uncovered in the very same cloistered Boston suburb, viewers were treated to an extensive report on a suspect pit bull farm in the Georgia backwoods. The alert, big-eyed blonde reporter whirled her camera to a small bag with a lump of fur showing. She choked up as she told the world, “And just look at this dead puppy.”
The terrorist must have wondered what he has to do to get some air time
CNN operates mainly on a diet of fear, though, apparently for a very receptive audience. Before one commercial break, the anchor announced, “If you’re not already a germophobe, you will be in a moment.” His scare story was headed “Reach out and touch swine flu.”
And if the swine flu doesn’t get you, breast cancer will, or terrorists will, or “severe weather” will, but only in Texas today. Sunny elsewhere--but it won’t last.
To a European, the shock treatment never stops.
* Veterinarians are going trendy now, informing cat-lovers they need a feline AIDS shot for their kitty. Just $58. No house cat is safe without it.
* Throughout the country, neighbors are at war with each other over housewives who eschew the energy-wasting electric dryer and now let their underwear blow in the breeze on an outdoor clothesline. A British documentary crew is already on it, with the working title “Drying for Freedom”. At least one neighbor, naturally in Mississippi, shot and killed a man who offended the community with his laundry.
* In one Massachusetts prison, inmates are begging not to be released on parole because they know they will never find work in this economy. Is it okay that it’s better to stay inside than go outside? Maybe for the rest of us.
As a French friend remarked after a couple of weeks touring America, “Every day is Halloween in this country.”
I try to visit once or twice a year. This time, more than ever, I felt a large sense of relief as I boarded an Air France flight and watched the “world’s greatest country” recede in the October mists. Seven hours later I was safe in Paris.
©2009 by Michael Johnson. This column first posted Oct. 26, 2009.
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