Martin goes all Oh say can you see

MUSIC +++ FILM +++ SPORT +++ PHOTO +++ LINK +++ POORLY REASONED POLITICAL OPINION AND STUPID JOKE

POL
Off my chest –

Okay, normally I can't stand polls or pollsters, but this one drips with irony. CNN cries: “Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider.” Apparently, 49% of us think he is, the other 49% thinks he’s not. In October, it was 48%-48%.

What’s the answer for a question that answers itself?

Ever hear the trial lawyer’s axiom, that you never ask a question unless you already know the answer?

An’ ain’t that just like a woman.


+POL
Anyway, yesterday’s column seems kinda pissy, almost in a John Mardis way, and I thought I’d spin the dial, so for today, I’ll actually tackle something really important that is never properly recognized. Give me five hundred words.

The operative word is “properly.” And the topic is the US. In a land where your bumper sticker speaks for you, sets your gray sedan further apart from my blue one, no one’s of the same opinion, but everyone’s of exactly the same way of speaking, of thinking.

Partisan is a dirty word. So is fuck -- but people do plenty of it anyway. Everyone is accused of having an agenda, maybe because everyone does have an agenda. This dates back to when politics was who got to do the cave paintings while the others had to go kill a mammoth.

Maybe you have to go out of this country, and look in. And I can tell this is one of those things, for me personally, that it’s hard not to be even partly bitter about.

But we have the greatest agriculture. Richest cultural history. Bravest loyalists. Scientists. Hollywood, New York, the Golden Gate, the Indy 500. And, like him or lump him, I don’t see Arnold coming to run for governor in your country.

We could claim that we’ve done about as much good in the world as anyone could or did in our short history. We threw back Hitler. Got a New Deal. And for every scene out of The Untouchables or Bang the Drum Slowly, there’s been a stout chest, a determined swagger, a little tug at the crotch.

We have the most freedoms. We do! Of course we try and give it to everyone else. Even if we’re sometimes the cat who was “just playing with” the mouse, people should know what it feels like to walk down Bourbon street holding five hurricanes at 3 am, or rattling off the list of worldwide celebrities you live near, or even – and I do hate to say this – to pull off the bootstraps thing as well as Condoleezza Rice.

Look, I’m obviously not rah-rah about the Red White and Blue, but I tried living anywhere else myself, and couldn’t even make it out of my own home town.

Have you ever traveled in this country? I don’t mean flown over it. To get in a car or on a bike and do the miles – well, let's just say: Easy Rider, Fear and Loathing, and the ending of The Graduate. And you meet the craziest people!

Other folks' billboards are funny, or confusing. Their cops are assholes in new and different ways. And if you ever want to know where you are, get directions. I mean, you don’t have to listen to the words themselves; just the local brogue. In fact, in half the nation you can basically count the “y’alls" and get within a zip code.

They only eat the dish called peas and peanuts – which is also made with plenty of mayonnaise, and sometimes whipped cream, too – in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. (The people live up to the name. The cuisine – well, it’s almost as good as it sounds.)

So no, it’s not unpatriotic to criticize. And the spread of McDonalds and Britney Spears is maybe not a good thing. But take it for what it is: probably the best country on Earth.

Now finish your dinner, or it’s no drive-through hurricanes for you.

MR

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“The opposite of a shallow truth is false. But the opposite of a deep truth is also true.”
-Niels Bohr