The Partly Cloudy Patriot

by Sarah Vowell

  When Paine wrote his pamphlet, which came to be called “The American Crisis.” winter was coming, Washington’s armies were in retreat, the Revolution was floundering. His words inspired soldiers and civilians alike to buck up and endure the war so that someday “not a place upon earth might be so happy as America.”

  Thing is, it worked. The British got kicked out. The trees got cleared. Time passed, laws passed and, five student loans later, I made a nice little life for myself. I can feel it with every passing year, how I’m that much farther away from the sacrifices of the cast-off Indians and Okie farmers I descend from. As recently as fifty years ago my grandmother was picking cotton with bleeding fingers. I think about her all the time while I’m getting overpaid to sit at a computer, eat Chinese takeout, and think things up in my pajamas. The half century separating my fingers, which are moisturized with cucumber lotion and type eighty words per minute, and her bloody digits is an ordinary Land of Opportunity parable, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it. I’m keenly aware of all the ways my life is easier and lighter, how lucky I am to have the time and energy to contemplate the truly important things—Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, the baked Alaska at Sardi’s, the Dean Martin Christmas record, my growing collection of souvenir snow globes. After all, what is happiness without cheap thrills? Reminds me of that passage in Philip Roth’s novel American Pastoral when the middle-aged, prosperous grandson of immigrants marvels that his own daughter loathes the country enough to try to blow it up:

  Hate America? Why, he lived in America the way he lived inside his own skin. All the pleasures of his younger years were American pleasures, all that success and happiness had been American, and he need no longer keep his mouth shut about it just to defuse her ignorant hatred. The loneliness he would feel if he had to live in another country. Yes, everything that gave meaning to his accomplishments had been American. Everything he loved was here.

  A few weeks after the United States started bombing Afghanistan and the Taliban were in retreat, I turned on the TV news and watched grinning Afghans in the streets of Kabul, allowed to play music for the first time in years. I pull a brain muscle when I try to fathom the rationale for outlawing all music all the time—not certain genres of music, not music with offensive lyrics played by the corrupters of youth, but any form of organized sound. Under Taliban rule, my whole life as an educated (well, at a state school), working woman with CD storage problems would have been null and void. I don’t know what’s more ridiculous, that people like that would deny a person like me the ability to earn a living using skills and knowledge I learned in school, or that they would deny me my unalienable right to chop garlic in time with the B-52’s “Rock Lobster” as I cook dinner.

  A few years back, a war correspondent friend of mine gave a speech about Bosnia to an international relations department at a famous midwestern university. I went with him. After he finished, a group of hangers-on, all men except for me, stuck around to debate the finer points of the former Yugoslavia. The conversation was very detailed, including references to specific mayors of specific Croatian villages. It was like record collector geek talk, only about Bosnia. They were the record collectors of Bosnia. So they went on denouncing the various idiotic nationalist causes of various splinter groups, blaming nationalism itself for the genocidal war. And of course a racist nationalism is to blame. But the more they ranted, the more uncomfortable I became. They, many of them immigrants themselves, considered patriotic allegiance to be a sin, a divisive, villainous drive leading to exclusion, hate, and murder. I, theretofore silent, spoke up. This is what I said. I said that I had recently flown over Memphis, Tennessee. I said that the idea of Memphis, Tennessee, not to mention looking down at it, made me go all soft. Because I looked down at Memphis, Tennessee, and thought of all my heroes who had walked its streets. I thought of Sun Records, of the producer Sam Phillips. Sam Phillips, who once described the sort of person he recorded as “a person who had dreamed, and dreamed, and dreamed.” A person like Elvis Presley, his funny bass player Bill Black, his guitarist Scotty Moore (we have the same birthday he and I). Jerry Lee Lewis. Carl Perkins. Hello, I’m Johnny Cash. I told the Bosnian record collectors that when I thought of the records of these Memphis men, when I looked out the window at the Mississippi mud and felt their names moistening my tongue what I felt, what I was proud to feel, was patriotic. I noticed one man staring at me. He said he was born in some something-istan I hadn’t heard of. Now that my globe is permanently turned to that part of the world, I realize he was talking about Tajikistan, the country bordering Afghanistan. The man from Tajikistan looked me in the eye and delivered the following warning.

  “Those,” he said, of my accolades for Elvis and friends, “are the seeds of war.”

  I laughed and told him not to step on my blue suede shoes, but I got the feeling he wasn’t joking.

  Before September 11, the national events that have made the deepest impressions on me are, in chronological order: the 1976 Bicentennial, the Iran hostage crisis, Iran-Contra, the Los Angeles riots, the impeachment trial of President Clinton, and the 2000 presidential election. From those events, I learned the following: that the Declaration of Independence is full of truth and beauty; that some people in other parts of the world hate us because we’re Americans; what a shredder is; that the rage for justice is so fierce people will set fire to their own neighborhoods when they don’t get it; that Republicans hate Bill Clinton; and that the ideal of one man, one vote doesn’t always come true. (In the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s report “Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election,” the testimony of Dr. Frederick Shotz of Broward County especially sticks out. A handicapped voter in a wheelchair, Dr. Shotz “had to use his upper body to lift himself up to get up the steps in order for him to access his polling place. Once he was inside the polling place, he was not given a wheelchair accessible polling booth. Once again, he had to use his arms to lift himself up to see the ballot and, while balancing on his arms, simultaneously attempt to cast his ballot.”)

  Looking over my list, I can’t help but notice that only one of my formative experiences, the Bicentennial, came with balloons and cake. Being a little kid that year, visiting the Freedom Train with its dramatically lit facsimile of the Declaration, learning that I lived in the greatest, most fair and wise and lovely place on earth, made a big impression on me. I think it’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of President Lincoln. Because he stared down the crap. More than anyone in the history of the country, he faced up to our most troubling contradiction—that a nation born in freedom would permit the enslavement of human beings—and never once stopped believing in the Declaration of Independence’s ideals, never stopped trying to make them come true.

  On a Sunday in November, I walked up to the New York Public Library to see the Emancipation Proclamation. On loan from the National Archives, the document was in town for three days. They put it in a glass case in a small, dark room. Being alone with old pieces of paper and one guard in an alcove at the library was nice and quiet. I stared at Abraham Lincoln’s signature for a long time. I stood there, thinking what one is supposed to think: This is the paper he held in his hands and there is the ink that came from his pen, and when the ink dried the slaves were freed. Except look at the date, January 1, 1863. The words wouldn’t come true for a couple of years, which, I’m guessing, is a long time when another person owns your body. But I love how Lincoln dated the document, noting that it was signed “in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.” Four score and seven years before, is the wonderfully arrogant implication, something as miraculous as the virgin birth happened on this earth, and the calendar should reflect that.

  The Emancipation Proclamation is a perfect American artifact to me—a good deed that made a lot of other Americans mad enough to kill. I think that’s why the Civil War is my favorite American metaphor. I’m
so much more comfortable when we’re bickering with each other than when we have to link arms and fight a common enemy. But right after September 11, the TV was full of unity. Congressmen, political enemies from both houses of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, stood together on the Capitol steps and sang “God Bless America.” At the memorial service at the National Cathedral, President and Mrs. Carter chatted like old friends with President and Mrs. Ford. Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York, kissed his former opponent Senator Hillary Clinton on the cheek as the New York congressional delegation toured the World Trade Center disaster area.

  In September, people across the country and all over the world—including, bless them, the Canadians, and they are born sick of us—were singing the American national anthem. And when I heard their voices I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had sung that song. I was one of the hundreds of people standing in the mud on the Washington Mall on January 20 at the inauguration of George W. Bush. Everyone standing there in the cold rain had very strong feelings. It was either/or. Either you beamed through the ceremony with smiles of joy, or you wept through it all with tears of rage. I admit, I was one of the people there who needed a hankie when it was over. At the end of the ceremony, it was time to sing the national anthem. Some of the dissenters refused to join in. Such was their anger at the country at that moment they couldn’t find it in their hearts to sing. But I was standing there next to my friend Jack, and Jack and I put our hands over our hearts and sang that song loud. Because we love our country too. Because we wouldn’t have been standing there, wouldn’t have driven down to Washington just to burst into tears if we didn’t care so very, very much about how this country is run.

  When the anthem ended—land of the free, home of the brave—Jack and I walked to the other end of the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial to read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, the speech Lincoln gave at the end of the Civil War about how “we must bind up the nation’s wounds.” It seems so quaint to me now, after September, after CNN started doing hourly live remotes from St. Vincent’s, my neighborhood hospital, that I would conceive of a wound as being peeved about who got to be president.

  My ideal picture of citizenship will always be an argument, not a sing-along. I did not get it out of a civics textbook either. I got it from my parents. My mom and dad disagree with me about almost everything. I do not share their religion or their political affiliation. I get on their nerves sometimes. But, and this is the most important thing they taught me, so what? We love each other. My parents and I have been through so much and known each other for so long, share so many in-jokes and memories, our differences of opinion on everything from gun control to Robin Williams movies hardly matter at all. Plus, our disagreements make us appreciate the things we have in common all the more. When I call Republican Senator Orrin Hatch’s office to say that I admire something he said about stem cell research, I am my parents’ daughter. Because they have always enjoyed playing up the things we do have in common, like Dolly Parton or ibuprofen. Maybe sometimes, in quiet moments of reflection, my mom would prefer that I not burn eternally in the flames of hell when I die, but otherwise she wants me to follow my own heart.

  I will say that, in September, atheism was a lonely creed. Not because atheists have no god to turn to, but because everyone else forgot about us. At a televised interfaith memorial service at Yankee Stadium on September 23, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu clerics spoke to their fellow worshipers. Placido Domingo sang “Ave Maria” for the mayor. I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don’t believe in god have to believe in is other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has something to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone’s way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I’m not saying it’s always easy. The occasional “Watch where you’re going, bitch” can, I admit, put a crimp in one’s day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath “we the people, we the people” over and over again, reminding myself we’re all in this together and they had as much right—exactly as much right—as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.

  Once, headed uptown on the 9 train, I noticed a sign posted by the Metropolitan Transit Authority advising subway riders who might become ill in the train. The sign asked that the suddenly infirm inform another passenger or get out at the next stop and approach the Stationmaster. Do not, repeat, do not pull the emergency brake, the sign said, as this will only delay aid. Which was all very logical, but for the following proclamation at the bottom of the sign, something along the lines of “If you are sick, you will not be left alone.” This strikes me as not only kind, not only comforting, but the very epitome of civilization, good government, i.e, the crux of the societal impulse. Banding together, pooling our taxes, not just making trains, not just making trains that move underground, not just making trains that move underground with surprising efficiency at a fair price—but posting on said trains a notification of such surprising compassion and thoughtfulness, I found myself scanning the faces of my fellow passengers, hoping for fainting, obvious fevers, at the very least a sneeze so that I might offer a tissue.

  State of the Union

  The Breakfast Club airs on cable every Saturday.

  Every time you watch 60 Minutes you learn about a horrible new way you can die.

  This is how a three-year-old will tell a knock-knock joke:

  Knock, knock.

  Who’s there?

  I’ve got a bug in my pocket!

  In Chicago, McDonald’s puts ketchup and mustard on the little hamburgers. But in New York City, there’s no mustard, only ketchup.

  You know who always has a good haircut? Meg Ryan.

  On Halloween, you really can’t go wrong with a gorilla suit.

  There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who alphabetize their record collections, and the kind who don’t.

  In his book Christgau’s Consumer Guide: Albums of the ’90s, the rock critic Robert Christgau, an alphabetizer if there ever was one, files the band Jon Spencer Blues Explosion under S even though there’s an argument to be made for J.

  In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups.

  When Dolly Parton is in a room, everyone else looks sort of drab.

  There are only two fruits native to North America and the cranberry is one of them.

  In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby; the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”; and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

  If you just hear him on the radio, Senator Joseph Lieberman sounds exactly like the independent film director Jim Jarmusch, but without all the mentioning Johnny Depp.

  Certain next-door neighbors were not big fans of the nine-CD Hank Williams boxed set.

  Pittsburgh has a nice airport.

  If you’re an insomniac looking for an alternative to counting sheep and you come up with trying to remember your best memory in each state of the union, keep in mind that in order to remember your best memory you have to flip through a lot of bad ones, so that by the time you get to that time your friend’s dad made you cry in Colorado, you’re pretty much wide awake.

  Jiffy Pop is as much fun to make as it is to eat.

  Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead at 75

  T
he front-page obituaries honoring the former Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry unimaginatively list only his most obvious achievements: Leading America’s team to five Super Bowls between 1967 and 1988; playing and coaching for the New York Giants in the fifties; fathering three children; and staying married for fifty-one years. Oh, but his life had greater, more metaphysical manifestations. At least to me. Before Sartre, before Camus, there was Tom Landry. He introduced me to existentialism.

  Tom Landry was my first entrée into dread: nagging, doubting, gnawing fear. And I’m not even referring to the ’79 Super Bowl, in which I crumpled onto the living room carpet and wept as my beloved Cowboys—oh, Roger Staubach, quarterback, my quarterback—lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The wound is still so fresh that to this day I change the channel every time the then Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw’s smug and shining pate pops out of my TV. (Can it be a coincidence that my own first love was the spitting image of Bradshaw and that he set my tender fifteen-year-old heart out to dry, only to hack it into strips of jerky, which he chewed up and swallowed in his pale green car while singing along with Frankie Goes to Hollywood?) Oh, I learned things from the ’79 Super Bowl—disappointment, upset, dashed dreams, et cetera—but those things combined do not necessarily add up to existentialism proper. (I also learned, just weeks before the game, at Christmas, that my mother had no understanding of the NFL, what with its separate players and teams and all, because when she sent a football for Roger Staubach to sign for me it came back with his signature—beautiful penmanship—but also covered in Dallas Cowboys stickers due to the fact that the ball my mother had sent Staubach to sign was a Joe Namath, so Namath’s name was blocked with little gray and blue helmets. And despite this faux pas, Staubach sent me framed team pictures two years in a row. Would Terry Bradshaw have been that gracious, that forgiving? Would he?) No, the existentialism came up in the off-season, as I read my Tom Landry Christian comic book.