Deep-Fried American Character

I'm back safely from New York, though I managed to get my face sunburned.

I burn quite easily. So, if I anticipate any extended time in the sun I make sure to use a little sunblock. Unfortunately, I didn't count on there being a street fair in Little Italy. Mulberry street is not really any narrower than any other street in New York, but if you fence off the sidewalks and then have giant vendor booths on both sides of the street, the little remaining space becomes a stagnant sludge of slowly moving people. It took a good half-hour to make what is usually a five minute walk to my favorite Italian place in the city, and by the end I could already feel my pale Irish skin tightening. Still, the trek left plenty of time to see what the local vendors where hacking.

The most interesting part of the street fair, to me at least, was the popularity of deep fried Oreos. I had no idea these even existed. Four for a dollar at most vendors, and they were selling very briskly. I've heard of deep-friend candy bars, but never cookies. Some of my coworkers had heard of the deep-fried Oreo, so it's not something that sprung up over night that I missed. It's something America has been doing for a while that I missed.

I'm not sure what it says about our country that we take something as delicious as an Oreo and deep fry it. Some would say it's just another symptom of our obesity epidemic; the product of a country with too much food and too many choices. A symbol of what is wrong with the United States. A deep-fried, artery clogging symbol of a country that just doesn't know when to stop. We will never stop in our pursuit of excess, or anything really. Once we get started in a direction, we run in that direction like the coyote chasing the white line into the tunnel painting on the side of the mountain. It's definitely great in a George W. Bush kind of way; admiring someone for there unabashed dedication to a cause. Kind of like watching a sprinter breaking the record for the fastest one-hundred meter dash even when they know the last meter is the air above a thousand foot chasm. And there are signs that say "1,000 Ft. Chasm Straight Ahead" every twenty meters. And the sprinter could run one-hundred meters in any other direction and not die.

"Don't go that way, there's a cliff!", you might say.

"Look, I started in this direction and I'll be damned and dead if I'm going to stop now!", they would reply.

It's really our unifying characteristic as a country at this point. Occasionally on the subway there will be a born-again christian preaching, trying to save all of us from a literal hell while we sit in a figurative one. Someone will always joke that this is "George Bush's America." And I guess it is, though I do remember this happening while Clinton was president too.

I don't remember deep-fried Oreos. Or the glut of reality television. Somehow, it seems to me if Gore had won the world would never have seen the 'Race Survivor' or 'Big Brother All Stars'. As a country, we would have had the good sense to stop.

I realize it's ridiculous to blame these things on the President. Even though I'm not directly blaming him and just comparing it to some hazy idea about a new, national paradigm of thinking, it's still ridiculous. Pundits say a country can take on the personality of it's President, and I'm sure during the late nineties pot use and oral sex among Americans went way up(along with a desire to find common ground for the common good), but no one besides Ann Coulter would have thought to blame it on Bill Clinton¹.

I still think I'm right though.

Joe Gibbs still believes in Mark Brunell and John Hall, despite horrid performances². American Idol keeps on going even though each winner becomes less and less relevant³. NASA refuses to moth-ball the shuttle program. The housing bubble in DC continues to grow and grow despite obvious signs of an impending burst. In a world where Al Gore or John Kerry were president, this would seem disturbing.

In George Bush's America, though, nothing about those things seems unusual. It's pretty much how everything feels like it should be. So enjoy the deep fried-Oreos. Until 2008 at least.

¹My apologies to Ms. Coulter if she actually did this.
²I would still follow Coach Gibbs into Hell.
³True story. My girlfriend really liked Kelly Clarkson, but I ruined Kelly for her when I told her off-hand that it was great at least one American Idol winner was doing well. She had no idea Clarkson was the first American Idol. So, kudos to you KC for doing a great job distancing yourself from the institution that both created you and could destroy you.