-
-
Give Yourself a Present, America
-
A lightness of countenance has fallen on Washington. I kid you not. Strangers were talking to each other in elevators, smiles in the street made walking a pleasure.
Even President Obama lightened up. At his midweek press conference, the president seemed in an unusually good mood: helping NBC’s Chuck Todd sort out his questions, referring cheerfully to the work ethics of his daughters (and his own), and lampooning the corporate jet set.
Had peace broken out somewhere? On Capitol Hill, in Libya or Afghanistan, between Los Angeles Superior Court judge Stephanie Sautner and Lindsay Lohan — her honor dropping by for a few belts?
No. It all comes down to the prospect of a four-day weekend. It should be three days, but many are able to stretch it to four. Heapings of happiness!
By the joy this little perturbation in routine has wrought, it’s clear that Americans are overstretched, overworked, overstressed and badly in need of R&R — even just a syllable of it — over the Fourth of July weekend.
Also it’s a birthday bash. Uncle Sam has made it through another year and the dollar is still worth having; the barbecue worth lighting; and the hamburger, America’s great contribution to cuisine, worth eating. Even though Budweiser — like so much else nowadays — belongs to a foreign company, millions of us still find it worth drinking.
Hooray! Happy Birthday! For he’s a jolly good fellow! (Uncle Sam, that is).
Unlike many others of the British persuasion, as I once was, I agree with my colleague Martin Walker that Brits shouldn’t feel loss on the Fourth of July, but should be leading the celebration.
Walker, who knows a thing or two about celebrating, says: “I’m not downcast by the victory of honest British colonial farmers over a German king and his German mercenaries.”
That’s right, Americans love the Brits. Otherwise, why would a country that threw off the imperial yoke on July 4, 1776, go bats for the wedding of Prince Harry, heir to the despised throne once occupied by George III?
One thing the Brits do have over us: their vacations. A worker averages about a month a year of vacation.
Of course, it would never work here — especially not in Washington. Think of the anxiety. Oh the fear of being left out, losing your job or just being bored. Americans on long vacations get surly, marriages creak and desperate couples hunch over lunch in faraway places, trying to decide where to have dinner.
No. No. No. Our special genius has been the creation of the long weekend. We have more of them than most countries; they are envied even by the French who talk about — I kid you not again — le long weekend.
We have something here. Instead of pining for more vacation , we should build on the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Memorial Day by working only a four-day week.
I don’t like to point fingers, but there are those in the bureaucracy who are pioneering the new order for us. Around Washington, in the aisles of the supermarket and the sporting-goods emporium, you can hear it every Friday: Some person of impeccable rectitude about other things, declaring, “I’m working from my home office today.”
At the commuter rail station I use, parking is a big problem every day of the week except Fridays, when more than half the spaces are open. Well, not casting aspersions, I have to advise that 80 percent of the riders are government employees. Ah, the lure of the “home office” on Friday.
Here’s my proposal: Increase the workday to 10 hours and have three-day weekends every week. Once again America will be the envy of the world, even if we have to prohibit home-office work by civil servants on Thursdays. This way we’ll be a happier people. We’ll have given ourselves a present that keeps on giving.
Happy Birthday, America. And spare a kind thought for the Brits, who lost the best piece of real estate on Earth. Poor dears. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
- no responses
-
-
-
The Brits to America: No Hard Feelings, Chaps
-
Light the candles, fire up the grill, cue the fireworks — a birthday party is in the air. A nation’s birthday. To wit, America’s birthday, 234 and still young!
My friend and colleague Martin Walker, a famous British columnist and author, likes to remind audiences that the Fourth of July is not a time for him to be downcast about the American War of Independence. “I celebrate solid British yeoman farmers taking up arms against a German king and his German mercenaries,” he says.
Quite so.
Historically somewhat accurate, too. Like so many English monarchs, George III was of German descent, in his case Hanoverian. Also, the British administration, short on troops of their own, happily fielded Hessian mercenaries to fight the Colonists.
After the war, these men were demobilized in the states — a British habit that accounted for my paternal grandfather’s taking up involuntary residence in South Africa at the end of the Boer War.
Anyway, Walker isn’t the only Briton in modern times to embrace America and to make a life here — and a good one at that. I, too, am of the British persuasion; and I feel a remote connection to the left-behind Hessians because I live in a Virginia stone house constructed by some of them. They had brought with them skills beyond war-fighting, and applied those skills in building up the nascent nation in which they found themselves immigrants of necessity. By the way, it’s a great house. Danke schon.
There are hundreds of thousands of Brits in America — no one really knows how many because of their differing legal status. They are to be found all over, but are concentrated in southern Florida and Southern California. As Noel Coward wrote, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Dallas also is popular; and, for other reasons, New York is well supplied with Brits. If nothing else, they have to be there to oversee the transplantation of their plays to Broadway.
These wandering sons and daughters of Albion are among America’s greatest boosters, led by a coterie of journalists, known without derogatory implications at home as “hacks.” The dean of these was, without doubt, the late Alistair Cooke, who spoke lovingly about America for nearly 60 years in his weekly broadcasts of “Letter From America” for BBC radio.
The late Henry Fairlie lighted the way for British opinion writers in the America. Besides Martin Walker, these now include Gerard Baker; Tina Brown and her husband, Harry Evans; Christopher Hitchens; Andrew Sullivan; and Sebastian Mallaby.
What is it that the British expats so like about their American cousins’ homestead? Probably, it’s the sense of possibility that permeates American life. It’s what has made the word “America” a metaphor for hope, going back to the English poet John Donne in 1595.
And there is mobility. In America, one can lose one’s way in Baltimore and get a fresh start in Albany, Providence, Tampa, St. Paul or any other city. In Britain there is London; and if you lose your place in London, you may never recover.
Also in America, the Brits enjoy a special minority status. We have a terrible sense of superiority, making us immune to insult.
What do the Brits in America complain about? They complain about the lack of pubs and a pub culture; the lack of public transportation; and, above all, the lack of public health care.
And what do we give our hosts in this promised land as a thank-you gift? Well, we don’t whine. In a time when everyone is apologizing for transgressions in history, we’ll be celebrating our defeat this Fourth of July, choking down thin beer and reveling in thick, grilled rib.
Happy Birthday, America. Cheers!
- no responses
-
The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
February 6th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011