Blog Entry 07-04-2008
Reprinted from my profile at tv.com
If you read Annie's Mailbox – an
advice column put together by two of Ann Landers' editors in the wake of her
death some years ago – for July 4, 2008, you'll get a reprint of a poem by Otto
Whittaker in 1955 called "I Am The Nation."
And it's not terrible, all things
considered. I mean, a person writing such a poem in 1955 wouldn't have
to have included the two black people he mentioned, although he could easily
have included so many more. And he could've included many more than the two
women he named in the piece.
I guess my main problem with it is that
while all of the things he lists indeed are America and are the sort of things
that might make one feel patriotic and proud, there's an America he forgot to
mention, so if I may ...
I Am The Nation 2008
by Terry J. Aman
I was born on July 4, 1776, and the
Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodlines of the
world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed – although I
also offered oppression to the free, in slavery and in Manifest Destiny.
I am many things and many people. I am
the nation.
I am an overseer's whip, and wads of
Confederate money in plantation owners' pockets. I am Harriet Tubman and
Sojourner Truth, and I'm the sentiment behind the Underground Railroad. And
less abstractly, I am armies of anonymous Chinese immigrants involved in the
construction of the Central Pacific Railroad.
I am Abigail Adams, demanding equal
rights for women within the first hours of our existence as a free nation. I am
Carrie Nation and Susan B. Anthony. I am Eleanor Roosevelt. I am Geraldine
Ferraro, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. I am also Judge Thurgood Marshall
and Sidney Poitier, Dennis Haysbert and Will Smith. I am Duke Ellington and
George Clinton and Quincy Jones. I am Dorothy Dandridge and Halle Barre and I
am Barack Obama.
Yes, I'm a beacon of freedom to
millions, and I get extremely upset about it, especially when people come in on
the sly and do work I frankly didn't want to do anyway. The industry I throb
with these days often involves people working two or three part-time jobs with
no hope of health coverage or getting ahead. I'm a Wal-Mart store manager
demanding that employees work off the clock, and I'm a McDonald's store manager
who strip searches an employee.
I am Enron. I am Halliburton. I am a
vast pile of shredded documents and a mysterious fire in the Old Executive
Building where the vice president has his offices. Indeed, I am Dick Cheney and
George W. Bush and I'm the I.T. guy in charge of their unrecoverable electronic
mail. I am Donald Rumsfeld, and I am Abu Gharib, and I am the detention center
in Guantanamo Bay.
But then, back in 1955, I was also the
detention centers holding Asian Americans during World War II, so I have a rich
tradition of being afraid of my own citizens and acting accordingly, including
Sen. Joseph McCarthy's paranoia and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Heck, these days I'm also an FBI operative listening without a warrant to phone
calls made by American citizens because basically I'm frightened of them.
Naturally I'm also Pastor Fred Phelps
of the Westboro Baptist Church and godhatesfags.com and I'm the people who
lashed Matthew Shepard to a fence in Wyoming where he died of exposure. I'm
also a groundswell of grassroots efforts seeking to expand civil rights for
homosexuals. I am a gay wedding, and I'm the people who look on uncomfortably.
I am the nation where in 2005, my
300,000 richest citizens reportedly made the same amount as my 150 million
poorest.
I may be Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, but
I'm also Barry Bonds and Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. I'm Jerry Springer
and all of his guests. I'm Richard Hatch nekkid on "Survivor" and I'm
home to the jail cell he was thrown into for tax evasion, joining the some 2.3
million persons on record as being incarcerated in the United States.
I have the highest per capita
documented incarceration rate of any nation in the world, although I was
conceived in freedom -- or at least, that's what I keep telling myself.
May I one day reclaim the integrity,
the courage and the strength to keep myself unshackled, to become once again a
citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.
One can but hope. Happy Fourth,
everyone. 