What's (pardon me) American

At least once a day someone starts to say/do/discuss something they consider American, stops to apologize directly to me, and then continues with their thought. These things are not necessarily American, but they give us insight into the image we've been putting out into the world over the past decade. Here are a few of the things that have been attributed to America in my presence:
  • Loud, boisterous, and vaguely uncultured behaviour
  • Entrepreneurial, aggressive sales techniques
  • Wordy explanations
  • Quaint, old-fashioned opinions
  • Uptight reactions to bawdy subjects
  • Closed-minded judgments
  • Joey
  • Cultural self-centeredness
  • The phrase "the dog's dinner" (not a phrase I know, but maybe it's southern?)
  • Savvy marketing
  • Sexy marketing
  • Pretty much all marketing
  • Slapstick, unnuanced humour (see Joey)
  • Showy, extravagant spending
  • Over-produced, sensationalist news coverage
  • Panicky hatred and/or isolationism as a reaction to terrorism
Sigh. I have some PR work to do.

Comments

VaughnV said…
Sounds spot on to me. :-P

V.
4:36 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ways other than Paul Blart and lipstick to combat economic depression

They say that, when the economy tanks and you can't see any way through your pile of bills and are wondering who you'll look wearing one of those barrels with shoulder straps, women buy lipstick and everyone goes to upbeat, escapist movies to take their minds off their troubles. But I'm here to tell you that any lipstick worth having is nigh 'bout $20 or more and you'll just end up regretting it, and Hollywood has not caught up with the times yet. Plus, it's Oscar season, so once you've seen Slumdog Millionaire your choices are sexy Nazis seducing children, attractive suburbanites mourning the death of their dreams, and nuns and priests talking about child abuse. (That said, I hear Gran Torino is a good diversion with a message, and if you don't hate Brad Pitt as much as I do you could probably sit through that Owen Meany movie where he ages like he's from Ork .) And while I'm as big a Kevin James fan as the next person, you can't ask him
Read more

Executive MBA 2006-07 Director's Prize

This prize is awarded to the Executive MBA student who is judged by his or her peers to have contributed most to the overall success of the programme. Awarded to: Me I'm really happy about this - I've been the stream rep between the administration and my fellow students, which is the primary reason I've won this...I've managed a lot of situations and helped sort out problems, and while it's been a bit of work it's also been quite fun. I've got all sorts of thoughts and feelings, and in about an hour I'm calling my mom to hear about Thanksgiving with my brother and to tell her the news, but the over-riding reflection I have is this. My dad would be very, very proud. This would have made his day.
Read more

Planning Funerals

We've been picking out hymns and suits to wear at the visitation and crematory urns for the ashes and cemetery plots with a good view. My dad passed away at 1 PM on Father's Day. He'd been in excruciating pain, which progressed as the week went on. By Thursday night we had to up the morphine dose so that he slept all the time, but at least he wasn't writhing in pain. Metastasized bone cancer is an ugly, ugly thing. On Friday, I spent the day with him. I sat in the comfy chair in his room and read him my Managing Strategic Innovation prep work and case study. I guess I'm assuming it was the morphine that kept him sleeping, but we'll never really know. On Saturday, my mom and I played scrabble by his bed most of the day. There were some rousing plays, especially since she refused to let me play 'squab' and 'nori' because these were not familiar words to her and we didn't have an official scrabble dictionary handy. I called her a dirty cheater,
Read more