American "Culture"

    I was in a restaurant some years ago when I overheard a conversation in the booth next to mine.
One of the diners began talking about an Italian restaurant in his hometown, and before he even finished his first thought, one of his companions interrupted: "Do they serve pizza?"  As soon as the original speaker finished his sentence, the question came again: "do they serve pizza?"  "Yes."
"Then it's not a real Italian restaurant!" the interrupter crowed; "pizza's an American invention!"

    I had just seen "that guy" in action, the one who will proclaim loudly to everyone that everything he encounters, especially in the United States, is somehow inauthentic or fake.

    Regarding the pizza question, that guy's stance was idiotic.  Pizza really is an Italian invention.  It has been modified to suit more mainstream tastes, enough that Italian pizza-purists would deny that most of ours is true pizza; but it owes its existence to a Neapolitan dish which any Yankee would recognize as pizza.  That guy didn't bother to ask whether the restaurant in question served real Neapolitan pizza--he probably didn't know that it exists--his sole purpose was to prove that the restaurant was "not real."
(I might add that even if said restaurant had served American-style pizza, that doesn't preclude its being a real Italian restaurant!  but that would mean using logic, which is foreign to that guy)

    That guy often uses this tactic as a means of establishing superiority over others:
"I know it's not real.  You've been duped all your lives.  All Americans have been duped all their lives but not me.  They have to get up earlier in the morning than that to pull the wool over my eyes.  Look at how smart and sophisticated I am!"  And, aided by a general anti-American sentiment popular among a certain inferior breed of would-be intellectuals  (often college students), his peers are almost always inclined to go along with what he says--if they don't, they might be classed with all of the American fools too!

    The corned beef myth is another thing that sticks in my craw.  I remember looking through one of my Irish cookbooks  with an Irish-American friend of mine.  He came to the recipe for "corned beef and cabbage" and gave me a disappointed look, as if to say, "that's not real!  This book is full of shit!  You've been duped!  Not me though!"

    Well, for all of those guys out there, corned beef is mentioned as early as the thirteenth-century Irish Vision of MacConglinne, so for it to be a "fake American" invention would be a neat fucking trick!  Of course, that guy has never heard of the Vision of MacConglinne, but he has seen an American movie, The Devil's Own, in which an Irish character doesn't recognize corned beef when it is served to him.  And since it reinforces his game of proving that the entire United States is fake, that's good enough for that guy.

(for those who must know, the unpopularity of corned beef in Ireland is due to the fact that it's beef, which was rarely eaten by the lower classes.  Once the Irish moved here, the greater availability of meat meant that they could have things like corned beef, with the result that it's more popular among Irish-Americans than it ever was in Ireland.)

This is not to say that there are no problems with American culture--I even agree with Edred's assertion that our culture is sick--for it has been under vicious attack from various quarters for over a millennium.  That which passes for American "culture" today is often no more that a generic corporate product designed to be purchased by as many people as possible, and is shallow and meaningless while pretending to be deep and significant.  A prime example is "New Rock," whose tendency toward morbid introspection, self-pity, and a trite antinomianism passes for wisdom among the masses.
Our culture is in such a state of decay that it requires actual work on the part of any American who wishes to participate in life in an authentic and meaningful way without "adopting" a foreign culture.  Sadly, this latter option is more popular, for most people don't realize that we possess a history and culture which is every bit as rich and meaningful as the Native American, the Japanese, or the Tibetan traditions--but work on the rebirth is little-known and is met by fierce opposition.

So while I find that guy to be a repugnant caricature of a quick and piercing mind, I also recognize that his position is not entirely off the mark.  Our culture is ill, and needs work to be healed; but the solution lies neither in that guy's self-loathing cynicism nor in uncritical acceptance of everything that claims to be "American" simply because it was produced on our soil. 

Now you know why I put the word "culture" in quotation marks in the title.  Sensible people will be offended and want to know what I mean by putting "culture" in quotation marks, as if American culture was nonexistent.  If, however, you are one of those who saw the quotation marks and thought, "yeah, this guy knows what he's talking about!  There's no American culture!  It's all bullshit!"  you might very well be that guy--and I might very well want to punch you in the face.