A timely reminder that many of the accusations made by Europeans against Americans, at least as far as being unruly and violent, were once made with equal vehemence by Americans against Europeans, and in very much the same hectoring and moralizing tones. Woodrow Wilson alone had a good line, but they were all much the same. For an obscure reference, consider "The Lost Continent" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. His Pan American civilization of the future and its attitudes toward a forgotten Europe rendered barbarous by the endless Great War seem to channel the ambitions of American progressives [small p] of the day about the new world and their condemnations of the old, alike. No explanation is offered of how Latin America was brought to heel, of course. For me, Americans circa 1944 still were a European people, sprung off the mainstream a trifling 168 years before, the blink of an eye, not really enough to be a novus ordo seclorum. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe now. I'll be damned if I've ever heard that sort of sermon delivered anywhere else with the kind of disdainful panache James Garner gives it here, though. One forgets just how good his performances could be. Also, and for all this is well before my time- Julie Andrews- Yowza.
A timely reminder that many of the accusations made by Europeans against Americans, at least as far as being unruly and violent, were once made with equal vehemence by Americans against Europeans, and in very much the same hectoring and moralizing tones. Woodrow Wilson alone had a good line, but they were all much the same. For an obscure reference, consider "The Lost Continent" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. His Pan American civilization of the future and its attitudes toward a forgotten Europe rendered barbarous by the endless Great War seem to channel the ambitions of American progressives [small p] of the day about the new world and their condemnations of the old, alike. No explanation is offered of how Latin America was brought to heel, of course.
For me, Americans circa 1944 still were a European people, sprung off the mainstream a trifling 168 years before, the blink of an eye, not really enough to be a novus ordo seclorum. Not yet, at any rate. Maybe now.
I'll be damned if I've ever heard that sort of sermon delivered anywhere else with the kind of disdainful panache James Garner gives it here, though. One forgets just how good his performances could be.
Also, and for all this is well before my time- Julie Andrews- Yowza.