Giving us back our National Pride

Donna Bowman


My heart swells with patriotic pride—retroactive and historical patriotic pride, in any case—when I read Little Orphan Annie. The comic strip is one of the great American contributions to culture, and there’s no more American strip than Annie. As collected in IDW Publishing’s indulgent volumes, the strip reveals Harold Gray’s wonderfully conflicted yet deeply felt version of a distinctly American ethos. Many poor people think all rich people are bad, but that isn’t true; some—even those who got rich off the war—are dedicated to justice. Many rich people think all poor people are bad, but that isn’t true; some—even orphans who’ve had to make their way through the world with fists and street-smarts—want to do what’s right more than they want to get ahead. Gray interrupts Annie’s Depression-era adventures with Daddy Warbucks’ rants against progressive taxation, tariffs, and regulation, the constant bogeymen of American conservatism, but in the mouths of his characters, they come off as charming attempts to find a middle way between celebrating individual initiative and keeping a lid on hereditary privilege. And then there’s Annie, a feminist icon in disguise, the kind of can-do girl who brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan, probably for some immigrant family that isn’t getting a fair shake and needs a little help locating its bootstraps. I can’t think of a better time capsule for the peculiarly American conversation about free enterprise and personal moral responsibility—nor a more entertaining one.

I generally don’t take pride in being an American. Like Bill Hicks said, my parents fucked here—I didn’t have much say in the matter. But every once in a while, something will get to me, and I’ll feel… Well, not patriotic, exactly, but grateful. I just watched the complete DVD set of The Sopranos for the first time recently (full disclosure: I’m holding off on the last few episodes, just to stretch out the experience as long as I can), and, I know it seems weird, but it’s a show that makes me happy to be living where I am. Tony is a monster, but he’s a recognizable one, and often creepily sympathetic. His family, both immediate and extended, represents everything I think about this country; the reliance on sentimentality to overlook the rough spots, the way that sentimentalism can easily pour over into childish rage, the ignorant prejudices, the consumerist obsessions, the spoiled demand that everything work out the way you want it to, and underneath it all, that awful yearning for the world, and your place in it, to make some kind of sense. To belong somewhere, even if belonging means having to do horrible things. Being an American, if you’re lucky, means you have all these options about what kind of life you want to lead, and I think The Sopranos is an expression of how baffling those options can be, and the ways our past reverts endlessly back onto us whatever choices we’re able to make. That a show like this could last as long as it did, that it could be as successful as it was, and still be so uncompromisingly dark; that it could dare suggest that, even with all that soul-searching, it’s still possible to wind up a pretty evil fuck… That’s awesome. And it makes me proud that I live in a place where that kind of honesty is (sometimes) embraced.

Tasha Robinson


My cynicism and general distrust of groupthink and large organizations that demand adherence to a narrow set of ideals—churches, political parties, condo associations, etc.—puts me in about the same place as Zack when it comes to patriotism, which I too often see as a beard for a ruthless quashing of namby-pamby intellectuals who might dare to question our beloved leaders, or even dare consider the consequences and rightness of any of their actions. (’Merica: love it or leave it, hippie scum.) So I struggled with this question for the better part of a week before realizing that there’s one American organization I support with unquestioning fervor and full-on homeland pride: Netflix, the little DVD-by-mail company that for me embodies the American Dream. As all-American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet are, there’s something that trumps them all in Americany-ness: the capitalist freedom to come up with a good, original idea and make tons of money by bringing it to the public marketplace. Founded in 1997, just after DVDs hit the market, Netflix was a forward-looking company from the start, and its backers have been tireless about embracing new services and new technologies, and streamlining the company’s business model to stay competitive as other, similar companies entered the market. It’s also been phenomenally well-run so far as its consumer experience goes, at least for those of us in a major city, who get next-day service to go with the company’s vast collection of films, from the mainstream to the painfully obscure. From the start, I’ve seen Netflix as a scrappy Little Engine That Could, offering a far superior service but still trying to find its feet in the market, fighting its way past imitators and competitors, and proving that an awful lot of Americas really do value the depth and breadth of their film library over the instant gratification of renting whatever the corner video store carries 50 copies of at the moment. I’ve taken the Netflix/Blockbuster/Wal-Mart competition as seriously and personally as fanatics take the adventures of their local sports team, and I feel a massive surge of pleasure whenever I read about how well the company is doing, and realize that it is possible to make quality and creativity pay off in this country. (Maybe this is a slightly cheaty answer, but America is all about freedom of expression and the pursuit of happiness, and Netflix makes me giddily happy. So there.) 

Noel Murray


As three Jewish kids in love with punk and hip-hop, the Beastie Boys embody the “melting pot” quality of America about as well as any act in popular music. (And the “cultural theft” aspect as well, but let’s not dwell on that so much.) For me, though, the Beastie Boys are inspiring for their wide-ranging enthusiasm: for sports, for spirituality, for political engagement, for cartoons, for cheesy ’70s cop shows, and on and on. Listening to a Beastie Boys album is like spending an hour with a funny, big-hearted friend who’s eager to share all the new music and movies and books he’s been digging since the last time you got together. The Beasties are embracers, and so is the America I love.

Nathan Rabin


At the risk of ripping off Noel, I’d like to nominate another artist who epitomizes our country’s rich musical melting pot: Bob Wills, the leader of the Texas Playboys, the father of Western Swing, and a towering figure who brought together various mutant strains of American roots music into a joyous celebration of music, dance, rhythm, and being alive. At a time when our country was divided by race, Wills’ music provided a safe place where black and white sounds intermingled joyously. There’s something quintessentially American about Wills himself. He’s a true Horatio Alger success story whose energy, enthusiasm, and playfulness never waned. He even sounds like Mickey Mouse, that preeminent American icon. 

Keith Phipps


I’m afraid I’ll have to echo Noel and Nathan with my choice. When I hear Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” I’m pretty proud to be an American. Like everything released by the Stax label in the ’60s (though this was technically from the Stax sister label, Volt), it was a product of black and white musicians coming together in the midst of a lot of forces determined to keep them apart, and preferably to keep the black half down in the process. Here, Stax house guitarist Steve Cropper and the incomparable Redding tried to create something new by melding Southern soul with some of the folk sounds they’d heard out on the West Coast. They succeed beautifully, evoking a restlessness and dissatisfaction with the way things are and a hope for the way they ought to be—two things hardwired into the American spirit. Redding, who recorded it shortly before his death in a plane crash, sounds disappointed but undefeated, which feels quintessentially American, too.

Josh Modell


I’m going to say what I should’ve said for the AVQ&A about the pop culture our parents exposed us to: the great American treasure Richard Pryor. I distinctly remember listening to Richard Pryor: Wanted in the car with my dad, and laughing hysterically at the story of Pryor’s father, who apparently died while having sex with an 18-year-old girl. (“He came and went at the same time.”) Pryor was able to seamlessly blend funny, raunchy stories with fully political sentiment, probably because it was all part of one big American story—his own. Raised in a brothel in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor worked his way up as an offense-free nightclub comic, and he could’ve had a successful career with vanilla observations. An artistic awakening in 1967 sent him down a different road, though, as Pryor realized his true calling was truth itself—his truth, delivered in such a wickedly funny manner that he melted racial boundaries by exposing their stupidity. He was that rare personality who was both purely entertaining and vitally important.