Lightbulb Over Head Blog

In my last post, I made mention of my support of the Obama Administration. The author of Acre of Independence (http://acreofindependence.com/), regarded as one of the top 100 Libertarian websites and blogs, questioned my assertion of Obama’s progress. When I praised Obama’s work abroad and his success in improving our international reputation, Acre of Independence responded with the following:

What policy area has America’s newly gained prestige you referenced helped us out in? In terms of our major foreign policy challenges (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al), there has been little shift either way. Much of our activity in Pakistan such as the Drone Attacks on suspected insurgents (as well as in Africa), which have increased in tempo since Obama took office, are likely to push many people into Al Quaeda or affiliated groups, too.

I happened to have lunch today with a friend who just returned from a trip to Egypt with his father. I believe they were abroad for three full weeks. As we ate our Thai food and he showed me pictures of adorable stray cats in a market place and camel rides around the pyramids, he mentioned how positive his reception was in the country. He also shared with me a letter from Alexandra Bonds, a professor of Lighting Design from the University of Oregon who is currently living Cairo. I asked him if I could share the letter here as it is well written and very interesting, as well as giving us here in the United States a sense of how effective our President’s work in foreign policy has been. The letter was prompted by a question about how Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 had been received.

Yes, Obama scored big in Cairo. The city is basking in an afterglow and aftershock of disbelief. Could an American president really have said all those things? The  Egyptian media is uniformly positive, rapturous at times. I watched commentary on Nile TV after the speech. The three women, a professor, politician and journalist were positively moon-eyed. Made me want to hand them a cigarette. Then I turned to Al Jazeera where they were interviewing a senior member of Hamas. With deep reverence, he called it an “I have a dream” speech. Then a former Israeli government official waxed on about it. Today, I read an op-ed in the Al Ahram with the line, “..I wasn’t the only one  in the audience with tears in my eyes.” It seems the only really negative reaction is coming from American conservatives, Israeli settlers and the Taliban. You can come to your own conclusions on that one.

The brilliance in the speech was how well it addressed its audience. The tenor, cadence and rhetoric were Arab. He used the word “Palestine”, which no other  American president has done. Arabs notice these things. Obama is brilliant at hitting his audience beneath the cortex. He goes for the heart and lymbic system. Arabs, suckers for eloquence, emotion and grandiose praise, wilted like lettuce in the desert sun. Many have criticized the speech on a few strategic or policy issues, but the criticisms are transparently tepid. “But, he understands us and honors our culture,” is the subtext. Saeb Arakat, a Palestinian spokesperson who has frequently shows up on  American news programs over the last decade, said “Since 1698 (then referenced some incident between the Ottomans and some European power) this is the first time a western leader has (then something about respecting the culture)” 1689. These guys keep track.

And, on the street it’s the same. My landlord, clutching his chest, said, “This man Obama has a great heart!”  My doctor (whom I saw on Thur PM for a vaccination), having just returned from Cairo University where he watched the speech, was so excited he couldn’t contain himself. He rattled on from English to French, brandishing a needled syringe about with expressive but scary flare. “This man is a genius!” And, these two guys are Christians. You should hear the Muslims, may peace be upon them (like my Obama technique?)

My response has been strange. For the first time, I welcome taxi drivers asking me where I’m from (in the past I cringed and often replied “Canada”). AMERICA I say, knowing I’m going to get the same response: “OBAMA, meya meya (100%) good man”.  Thank you, I utter humbly, taking credit for it all. Yes, it’s nice not to be ashamed.

Alexandra Bonds
Professor of Costume Design
Department of Theatre Arts
University of Oregon

In the mid 1990’s, I asked my parents if we could take a trip to Egypt. I had dreams of being an Egyptologist and an Archeologist and I was crazed with what could only be described as “Egyptomania.” I had hieroglyphic kits and my attic was packed with relics and treasures that I had used to build my ancient Egyptian clubhouse/palace where I dined with Rameses II (imagined as Yul Brynner from The Ten Commandments) on a regular basis. My mother and father looked at me sadly and said that Egypt wasn’t a safe place for Americans to visit. Judging by this letter and by the things my friend told me about his journey, we may be a little bit safer as public opinion regarding America and Americans is changing there. Perhaps we will be able to journey to the Middle East to learn more about Muslim culture and engage in a dialogue of learning rather than cave to fear of  religious radicals.

I have included youtube videos of the President’s speach in Cairo for your consideration and enjoyment.

It has been a long time since I last felt patriotic. The sound of “Proud to be an American” makes my skin crawl and decidedly ashamed to be an American.

That feeling of my stomach turning is so far from the joy I got from marching in the Memorial Day Parade in Chicago as a child. I would innocently dress up my pink, purple, and white tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers. I remember my mom and dad twisting the small silver wires to make a white dove with real feathers bought from some arts and craft store roost beneath my seat. It was truly a glorious vehicle to behold.

We would march, ride, rollerblade, and walk through the city with drums rat-a-tat-tatting all the way the way to the park. They thundered so loudly in your heart and when you closed your mouth, you could feel the sonic vibrations in your teeth. Additionally, I remember these colorful packs of jelly candies that they gave out every year when we got to our final destination in the park. They did acrobatics and someone important gave a speech. That was always the boring bit as a child, but I was way too busy eating my jelly candy and giggling with my friends from the neighborhood to care much.

I also have fond memories of going to Connecticut in the summertime to celebrate 4th of July with my father’s side of the family. Our current patriarch, my dad’s oldest brother Jack, invited every member of our clan to his house for the weekend and we would set up a volley ball net and I would swing on the swing that hung from the massive branch of the  giant oak tree out front. There was also a fish pond in the backyard and a big log that I would climb across and pretend that it was the gateway to another world. We would cook burgers and laugh and when the evening settled down, we would all watch a classic movie like Sunset Boulevard or Psycho. It was a time to feel the love of family and reunite and refresh. It almost felt like New Year’s Eve in the sense that I sort of measured my childhood years by the arrival of the 4th of July.

As I grew older, these small acts of patriotism faded. I grew out of my tricycle. The Connecticut house burned down. I began going to summer camp in North Carolina and I simply began to loath family dinner parties and the baggage of having that one evening to give people information and updates on my life by which they could measure my progress from the previous Thanksgiving or whenever we had spoken last. I enjoyed seeing people of course, but I always felt tremendous pressure. As an actress, I wanted to make my parents proud of what I was doing or I wanted to be seen as successful in an industry that is “hard” if not impossible.

My innocent idolatry of the red, white, and blue became like some distant memory.

The closest I came to patriotism was watching Independence Day when Bill Pullman gave the big speech before the epic battle with the Alien race that wants to take over Earth.

In that movie as a whole and especially during that speech, there is a collective sense of community and duty in the face of death. It connects American independence with the rest of the globe. I think I was attracted to it because as I was growing up, I really felt like America was an island. I was very blessed to be able to travel around the world to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Turkey, and Greece. I was exposed to other views of America from outside of our borders. I remember that I was roaming the streets of Paris as a child and looking into the glass window of a Patisserie. The owner of the shop rushed out and ushered me away to my American parents who were just down the block finishing their French morning coffee and croissants. The shopowner was not happy to have some American child poking around his window and pushed me towards my father before stomping back up the street and into his store.

When I was doing a theater exchange with some students from England, they were very welcoming but wouldn’t stop pestering us about how in God’s green earth President George Bush had been re-elected. I had to remind them that none of us, who were in our junior and senior years of high school, were old enough to vote. However, nothing I said could assail them. They wanted to know how our country could have been so dumb.

As a liberally minded young American, I became increasingly upset at many of the topics brought into the spotlight during the Bush Administration. In my mind, so many of them were connected to religion. Many of the protests against gay marriage focused on the fact that the Bible “tells us” that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why should the Christian God dictate what our citizens of varying religions should do? So many Bible Thumpers were in arms over A Woman’s Right to choose. I agree that this is a sensative subject, but I just don’t think that anyone should be able to dictate what I can and can’t do with my body. The rate of teen pregnancy is increasing in our country and more and more and our young men and women are starting families before they are ready. On top of this, the administration wanted to stop stem cell research, research that could help to find a cure any number of diseases that our world faces. In a way, stem cell research gives new life to these “pre” humans by using them to advance our knowledge and understanding of the human body and the development of new medicines and treatments to help us thrive and save lives.

After 9/11, I was devastated just like everyone else. It was just such a horrible tragedy. I could try to quantify my emotions and the events that followed it, but that is not really the subject of this article. However I will say that somewhere inside of myself, there was a tug on the string of my patriotism. I think it would have blossomed if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the mass marketing of everything blindly patriotic that poured from middle America. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked down on it all, but honestly, as I said at the outset of this peice, the song “Proud to be An American” makes my stomach turn because it is so mind-numbingly broad. Words like freedom and liberty are so much a part of our collective conciousness that they begin to loose meaning with every use. I think we take them for granted as does that song. It employs almost every one and manages to fill up verses and choruses while actually not saying much of anything at all. America as a whole became so inarticulate after 9/11 that I became desensitized to the American flag. It was on bookbags, pins, T-shirts, miniflags, keychains- EVERYWHERE. The flag itself became a pop sensation. No wonder no one took us seriously. No one takes Britney Spears seriously.

Near the end of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s musical, 1776, John Addams wonders on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence if anyone sees America the way he does. I am including the lyrics here for anyone who has not seen the show. I am including the sequence here for your viewing pleasure.

I began to feel a bit like Addams in this number. “Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care? Does Anyboy See What I See?” I saw the lifeblood of true America dying a little each day.  I saw our liberties being questioned and taken from us one by one.

This year, everything changed for me. Barack Obama was elected our 44th President of the United States of America. As a Chicagoan, I knew he was the man for the job almost immediately after I heard he was running. I knew it would be a hard road, but for the first time in a long time, I hung on to a hope for this country. I invested in current events and our national progress. Instead of writing off this war as an egregious nightmare created by the Bush Administration, I saw a man capable of ending our part in the turmoil and I what’s more, I listened and I felt connected to those lost, and those still fighting.

I know that in recent articles I have been disparaging about the spirit I sometimes feel while living in New York City. However, I haven’t mentioned that the true strength of our community sometimes shines so brightly that I am left gaping in awe. I have felt it several times, but I will tell you that on Election Night 2008, New York City came alive. Cars zipped through Bushwick in Brooklyn with loudspeakers chanting Obama’s name. People smiled at each other in the East Village and waved American flags not because thats what they were obligated to do to support our country but because they were moved to raise our country’s iconic colors. In Time’s Square, the lights shown with hope and triumph, and not with amusement park neon.

In his iconic speech from Election night 2008, Barck Obama reminded me that we are not a collection of red and blue states, but that we are forevermore the United States. I realize that I am capable of prejudice, that in this post I have called middle America uncultured, and called recent national patriotism into question. I have pointed many fingers. I know have a lot to learn and I am not saying that I don’t believe it can come from being exposed to opinions from other parts of our great Nation. But today.

Today we stand United. Today, I am proud to be an American. Today somebody is there. Today is our Independence Day.