Fresh Off the Boat from the Old Country
I’ll have a full write up of our Ireland trip later on in the week but I wanted to mention something that struck me: quite a few people in Ireland were excited about Barrack Obama [1]. And I’m not talking about a handful of Dubliners or some uppity Trinity College students but random people out in Co. Clare and environs. Our driver had an Obama sticker on the back of his bus[2] and was far more informed about American politics than half the people in our group, all of whom were Americans in their late 20’s to mid 60’s.[3] And yes, I know what sort of loopy intelectual gymnastics come of taking drivers and their political beliefs as a sign of anything other than a side effect of globalization. But still. The priest even had a few thoughts on the matter of Rendition and it’s political implications and he lives on Inish Moor, which is pretty much the definition of the middle of bloody nowhere. There’s something to that. I’m just too exhausted to figure out what, just now.
________
1.Or Bar-Rick O’Bama as they pronounced it, like he were a local boy who had done good.
2. Michael the Irish Bus Driver would be far more capable of running the country than any damn fool plumber or halfwit Alaskan beauty queen, I might add. Not that I really want to go down that ridiculous road again. The Real American Heartlander=the Noble Savage. But still, the facts remain unchanged: some random Irish bus driver was more informed about our political system than the current Governor of Alaska and even Obama can’t fix that. You may now despair for our nation.
3. Except for the two toddlers but even they were more worldly than half the voting populace of the US. Sophia’s been to a half dozen countries and is not yet 2. But that’s a different issue.
Comments are closed.
Ah the noble savage, a concept we beat to death in my Native Studies program at evergreen. Noble Savage = Myth. It was a projection of romanticized ideals upon a people most armchair philosophers had little direct experience of. We know that in reality our modern American Heartlander is generally poorly educated in underfunded rural schools, thinks that liberal = socialist, and unquestionably adheres to views of halfwit beauty queens.
Yep. Same with the True American Heartlander being the barometer of true American ideals. As if Cheetos and PBR are derived form the Constitution.