The Culture of America

There are those who say that the “West” has no culture. I would (amazingly enough) like to disagree with that statement.

The United States (usually the butt of this insult) has a very rich, complex, and vital culture. It encompasses drive-in movies and barbeques, gospel choirs and Broadway musicals, county fairs and steak dinner, Edgar Alan Poe, Robert Frost and Mark Twain, BB King and Johnny Lee Hooker, Blues, Bluegrass, and good old rock-and-roll.

Only those who narrowly define "culture" as "fancy food with tiny portions", "1,000 year old dances with lots of gold jewelry" and "European opera" defend the ridiculous notion that the US has no culture.

And if you want fancy-faluutin' culture? Try the Metropolitan Opera, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, or the museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, just to name a few.

We brought forth Billy Holiday, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, KoKo Taylor, and Satchmo.

Edgar Alan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Henry David Thoreau.

Aaron Copeland, Charles Ives, and George Gershwin.

Georgia O'keefe, Jackson Pollock, and Andrew Wyeth.

Porgie and Bess, Our Town, and the Seven Year Itch.

The Ford Mustang, the Corvette Stingray, the Cadillac Eldorado, and the Jeep.

The Marx Brothers, George C Scott, Marilyn Monroe, Gene Autry, and the Duke.

The Kentucky Derby, the World Series, March Madness, the Superbowl, and... let's face it... the National Cow-Chip Throwing Contest.

You don't think we have culture? Spend a night on Bourbon Street, the Miracle Mile, or Broadway.

Take a ride down Route 66, ride the Empire Builder, or the Delta Queen.

You think we don't have culture?

Fine. We really don't need your kind here. We've got plenty of folx right here that know what they have.

Don't worry, we'll be sure to wave as we pass you buy, flying down I-95 towards the Windy City, dressed in our Levi's, with our Foster Grants pulled down against the low-riding sun as the wind blows through our hair and across the shiny black of our 1965 Corvette Stingray convertible; Johnny Lee Hooker playing out loud through the stereo ("a boom boom boom boom .. .. a bang bang bang bang bang”) and the smell of ribeye steaks and Texas barbeque, Jack Daniels, and Coca Cola, chocolate-chip cookies and apple pie wafting across the golden plains.

"Yippy-kay-ay!"

"Happy Trails."

"Say good night, Gracie"

"Good night, Gracie."