Apparently, President Obama doesn't. Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and other "Birthers" continue to spin conspiracy theories while more reputable figures like John Sununu say things like "I wish this President would learn how to be an American."
I thought things got strange back in the early eighties with Maranatha preachers casting out demons in the Oregon State quad and young Reaganites outnumbering liberals in the cast of Gershwin and Kaufmann's political musical "Of Thee I Sing" (a theater crowd combined with a campus setting, and you'd think there would have been more of us that thought the Reagan administration's declaration that ketchup and pickles are vegetables hilariously awful. . .). And then there was Howard "I'm-Mad-As-Hell" Jarvis turning anti-tax hysteria into virtue, and President Reagan sunnily declaring "America is back, standing tall," to wild applause and gushing commentary, after illegally mining Nicaraguan waters and sending the troops to crush tiny Grenada.
The strangeness then doesn't compare to that of the present. It seems the combination of economic hard times and the election of our first black president have released our inner looniness. And while race was obviously an issue a generation ago (remember all the talk of the GOP capturing disaffected white Democrats?), it appears that Du Bois' "problem of the Twentieth Century" remains with us in the Twenty-First, though it bubbles to the surface in different ways.
Now, no doubt Arpaio is in part engaged in some tit-for-tat. He's under federal indictment for racial profiling of Latinos in his campaign against undocumented immigration. So he once again hauls out the tired accusation that Obama is not really an American and therefore not our legitimate President. I suppose we could see Arapio as just keeping up an old American tradition of nativism that has been around since Ben Franklin's whine back in 1751 about all those "alien" and "swarthy" Germans (I've been called many things, but I don't think "swarthy" was one of them).
But we can also consider this in the context of a broader effort to restrict the number of people entitled to be American: the anti-immigrant and so-called "self-deportation" legislation in states such as Arizona and Alabama, or new voter photo ID laws in ten states that make it more difficult for poorer and otherwise marginalized citizens to vote, or even register to vote. I could even mention the Obama administration's decision to justify the execution of American citizens deemed guilty of terrorism, without due process of law.
I'd say our country is in the middle of an existential morass in which we have tremendous disagreements over how we identify Americans, who gets to be an American, and what being an American really means under the law.
So it's no surprise that John Sununu, instead of sticking to a critique of Obama administration policies, resorted to a complaint about the president's lack of Americanness. As if there were one proper way to be American--a common note, but still a hypocritical one in a country that touts its pluralism.
Sununu later tried to explain what he really meant: "What I thought I said but guess I didn't say is that the president has to learn the American formula for creating business," meaning that the private sector is supposed to do it, thus adding jobs, not government.
Really? New Deal policies that put people to work were devised by people who hadn't learned to be American? So all those defense contractors and road construction companies in the Eisenhower era didn't do it the American way? Absurd, and there's still the implication of Sununu's remark--if his ally Romney's policy stances are truly American, then those of us who disagree with them are what? You guessed it, and I suppose Congress had better revive its Committee on Un-American Activities to safeguard the nation.
I thought things got strange back in the early eighties with Maranatha preachers casting out demons in the Oregon State quad and young Reaganites outnumbering liberals in the cast of Gershwin and Kaufmann's political musical "Of Thee I Sing" (a theater crowd combined with a campus setting, and you'd think there would have been more of us that thought the Reagan administration's declaration that ketchup and pickles are vegetables hilariously awful. . .). And then there was Howard "I'm-Mad-As-Hell" Jarvis turning anti-tax hysteria into virtue, and President Reagan sunnily declaring "America is back, standing tall," to wild applause and gushing commentary, after illegally mining Nicaraguan waters and sending the troops to crush tiny Grenada.
The strangeness then doesn't compare to that of the present. It seems the combination of economic hard times and the election of our first black president have released our inner looniness. And while race was obviously an issue a generation ago (remember all the talk of the GOP capturing disaffected white Democrats?), it appears that Du Bois' "problem of the Twentieth Century" remains with us in the Twenty-First, though it bubbles to the surface in different ways.
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| Sheriff Joe Arpaio, birther extraordinaire Matt York/AP |
But we can also consider this in the context of a broader effort to restrict the number of people entitled to be American: the anti-immigrant and so-called "self-deportation" legislation in states such as Arizona and Alabama, or new voter photo ID laws in ten states that make it more difficult for poorer and otherwise marginalized citizens to vote, or even register to vote. I could even mention the Obama administration's decision to justify the execution of American citizens deemed guilty of terrorism, without due process of law.
I'd say our country is in the middle of an existential morass in which we have tremendous disagreements over how we identify Americans, who gets to be an American, and what being an American really means under the law.
 |
| Former NH Governor and Romney ally, John Sununu Denis Poroy/AP |
Sununu later tried to explain what he really meant: "What I thought I said but guess I didn't say is that the president has to learn the American formula for creating business," meaning that the private sector is supposed to do it, thus adding jobs, not government.
Really? New Deal policies that put people to work were devised by people who hadn't learned to be American? So all those defense contractors and road construction companies in the Eisenhower era didn't do it the American way? Absurd, and there's still the implication of Sununu's remark--if his ally Romney's policy stances are truly American, then those of us who disagree with them are what? You guessed it, and I suppose Congress had better revive its Committee on Un-American Activities to safeguard the nation.
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