American from Arizona

[unbibium]

Penn Jillette on Ugly Americans (audio).  He talks about his own world travel experiences, and how he was often urged to pose as a Canadian.  This was spurred by an advertising consortium that's publishing behavioral guidelines for American tourists, so that all our boasting and loudness and informal dress doesn't damage their precious brands.  Penn ultimately disagreed, for reasons both hippies and conservatives can agree with.  The hippies will agree that, when our government is being a bully, and our corporations are taking advantage of undeveloped countries, you can't say people hate America because of tourists.  The conservatives will agree that it's a double-standard that Americans are being asked to modify our behavior when we travel, when visitors from other countries aren't required to modify their behavior for us.

I will say that when I was at the NOAH conference, there was a guy from Nigeria.  He wore a suit the way an American tourist wears shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.  It made him look like he wasn't from around here.  But, since he wasn't from around here, that was OK.  Incidentally, albinism organizations are much more important in countries where sunscreen isn't widely available.

I refuse to pose as a Canadian, because it's a lie, and even if I could stand spending my whole vacation in the closet, I doubt I'd be convincing.  Besides, then Canada would get the credit/blame for anything I do over there.  Also, I think at least the Europeans are hip to it.

But, at the same time, why display an American flag?  Apart from how America is perceived overseas, and apart from how the presence of any foreign flag is perceived in any given country, it's really not specific enough.  Imagine someone walking around the U.S. with a European Union flag.

So, when I'm overseas, I wear an Arizona flag lapel pin.  If they don't recognize it, they can ask what it is.  And I generally tell people first that I'm from Phoenix, Arizona, and then that it's in the southwestern U.S.  I get the feeling that, in the minds of others, America is a political entity, but Arizona can be a place.  It's not separate from America, but it is distinct from, say, Washington D.C., or New York City, or California.  And maybe they've heard something about Arizona, even if it's something stereotypical like the heat, or the Old West, or the Grand Canyon.  It's likely a better starting point than giving them all 50 states to choose from.

Also, Arizona has an awesome flag.

Comments

[stacebass.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I refuse to be ashamed of my country. When people get all up in my grill about being an American, I throw out some specific knocks against my leaders; this ususally gets to the heart of what they really hate. Often, they bring up what they hate about their leaders, too.

However, I've talked with Canadians about this, and Candians are extra-special proud of their country, and it's not a differentiate-us-from-them, post-9/11 thing. That's fine by me.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Nobody really gets up in my grill about being an American. Maybe I just don't talk to enough people.

One day in Tokyo, I was wearing all denim, and the wide-brimmed leather hat, and a couple of people called me "Cowboy" at the subway station. That was pretty cool.

[stacebass.livejournal.com]

We went to a cowboy bar in Tokyo. They're all about the cowboys.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I'm still looking for the Arizona flag headband.

I wish I knew how to make my own. I'd sell them to tourist gift shops and make thousands!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

An Arizona flag headband would be awesome.

Arizona and New Mexico have the best flags. Massachusetts just has a rotten coat-of-arms-on-bedsheet flag.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think there is a fair amount of emphasis on differentiation, but it's not post-9/11; it goes back a long way. I got a lot of earfuls about Reagan's foreign policy from Canadians during the Eighties and Nineties. Living next to the US will do that to you. Canadians have a lot to be proud of, though; on the whole they've built one of the most decent societies on earth. What breaks my heart is when they lose perspective over that during, say, the periodic Quebec secession crises.

At various times I've gotten the opposite. In 1991 I got a long lecture from an Indonesian restaurant owner in Amsterdam about how he was sick and tired of Dutch socialism, thought the US was the place to be and wanted to join his brother in Los Angeles.

I was surprised not to get any static about my nationality when we were in Barcelona last fall. The one related conversation we got into was with a couple of British tourists on the ship; this was not long after Katrina and they were just horrified and concerned about how a government and society in the developed world could fail people so badly, but weren't sure if they'd been driven astray by hype. We assured them that as far as we could tell the situation was as bad as they had probably heard and then some.

[holywar.livejournal.com]

this was not long after Katrina and they were just horrified and concerned about how a government and society in the developed world could fail people so badly

As opposed to, oh, letting 15,000 elderly die during a heat wave, because we were all at the beach?

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

Definitely a matter of the "plank in one's one eye" ... the folks who criticize the US the most tend to completely not notice their own mistakes. :/

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Given that that happened in France, I'd guess the British reacted similarly to it, but I don't have direct evidence.

[stacebass.livejournal.com]

I'll never forget going to France a couple of weeks after 9/11 and meeting so many sympathetic, pro-American French. Not what I was expecting.

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

A lot of people seemed initially perplexed that I almost exclusively refer to myself as American -- I may not have been born here, but I identify much more as American than Filipino. I don't speak Tagalog, after all, and I fit very poorly within people's preconceptions of Filipinos anyway.

But I think I've rearranged a few people's preconceptions of Americans as well ... and the very first thing generally involves a, "Yeah, I'm glad I didn't vote for him!" Stace, you hit the nail on the head there -- I've done that too and gotten the same response, though honestly, I think Koizumi is better-liked in Japan than Bush is, well, ANYWHERE.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Besides, the modern surveys I've seen have generally agreed that Americans are not the rudest tourists.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Though given the difference between that survey and one of the older ones linked to on the page (Germans seem to have gone from best to worst somehow), I wouldn't give too much credence to those numbers.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

"Some accused the Brits of insulting staff and spitting at them, while one waiter claimed to have been threatened with a gun by an unhappy customer." That can't be right?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...As for posing as something other than an American, forget it. I figure that when I'm in another country, I have something like a patriotic duty (1) to not be a jerk and then (2) to let that reflect back on Americans in general.

Displaying a flag is odd, though. For one thing, most places I've been, I find people can tell I'm probably from the United States by looking at me for half a second. The one place this did not work was, strangely, on a Lufthansa flight from Dulles to Frankfurt am Main, where everyone started by addressing me in German. (And on which, incidentally, the German passengers complained about everything even though it was probably the best coach-class air travel experience I've ever had.)

They'll do the routine of first asking if I'm Canadian, because Canadians sometimes get angry when misidentified as Americans but the reverse is not true.

[miwasatoshi.livejournal.com]

People have to listen to me talk -- this is one of the perils of being "racially ambiguous" to most European-based cultures. Among Asians of course, I am automatically assumed to be Filipino - which is not necessarily a good thing in and of itself, as Filipinos are widely considered to be "Asian Mexicans", culturally and metaphorically.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Penn tells the story of him walking around, listening to a British friend telling some story, while wearing a set of clothes purchased entirely in Europe. And someone immediately pegged him as American from half a block away.

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

...As for posing as something other than an American, forget it. I figure that when I'm in another country, I have something like a patriotic duty (1) to not be a jerk and then (2) to let that reflect back on Americans in general.

Hear hear.

[darquis.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling that, in the minds of others, America is a political entity, but Arizona can be a place.

It's a great way to put it.