http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/9/26/02450/2713This might have been Meet the Press,can't remember.
Ms. Dowd: "No. I mean, he's running around acting like a "Today" show weatherman. I think he's looking for a photo op. He doesn't realize that Americans are in an identity crisis. We're wondering, if we can't take care of our own, our most vulnerable in society, who are we? If we can't, you know, deal competently with Iraq, who are we?"
Right on. I don't know what the fuck America is anymore, but it sure isn't the red, white and blue crap I was taught in grade school. Maybe never was. Maybe that's the point of all this, that the masquerade is finally finished. All it took was making a big deal out of a blow job, looking the other way while some buildings fell, killing 600k people for the sake of convenience, killing a few thousand Americans out of neglect live and in technicolor, and then revealing pederasty as the innately conservative institution that it always has been. I do believe this adminstration killed whatever mythology of 'specialness' that America had left. It's better that way, it just sucks so many people had to die for it.
I mean we are all programmed with this overblown myth, but you've got the genocide of native americans right at the get-go (I'm thinking of the poem by Chrystos called "Winter Count" where she says "By their own report america has killed forty million of us in the last century" and ends with "Never forget, america is our hitler") and slavery, and horrible mistreatment of just about every immigrant group that has ever come here (read "The Chinese in America", by Iris Chang, for one example), and the struggles for unionization and safe working conditions, oppression of women, gays and transgendered people...and on and on. I guess the question that needs to be asked is how did we get sold that overblown arrogant American identity in the first place and why did we fall for it. It's so very strange. It's obviously a marketing campaign, but we still seem shocked when our country fucks up...well, that's too kind, when our country does evil, like it's somehow 'un-American'. So weird.