Jinxie, as much as most Aussies would be reluctant to admit it, it’s true that being American will open many doors (so to speak) for you here. Australia is as multicultural as the US, and a European or Asian accent won’t even be noticed, but as there is a negligible American population here, it’s only the tourists who give us a chance to hear your accent. If you’re an American and you hit the nightclub scene here, you probably won’t leave alone. If you’re a black American and do the same, it’s even better -you will be mobbed.
My girlfriend is from Cairns, but has been here so long as to have lost her accent and is now thoroughly “Americanized.” I look forward to going back to meet her relatives as soon as the funds are available. She’s descendant from James Squires, owner of the first brewery in Australia (and she can drink beer like a true “Ozzie gull”).
As you may be able to tell from the posts so far, Americans identify a great deal with their region of the country (Southerners, Angelenos, Texans, Northerners). Each is unique is quite a few respects and results in loads of stereotypes.
Despite what you’ve heard, America wasn’t founded entirely by people searching for a place to practice their religion free from opression. Virginia, for example, was settled as a money-making enterprise (Jamestown, 1607 - first permanent settlement in present day America - why, oh why, did they establish it in a swamp?). Georgia was established as a penal colony (as was Australia). Massachusetts was settled by the Puritans, and Maryland by a Catholic contingent, but first and foremost early Americans came here for economic, not religious, reasons. That early drive may have something to do with our competitive nature.
In the South, “barbecue” is grilled pork - period. You can make the sauce either with a vinegar base, or a tomato base, but the main ingredient is still pork.
At the risk of sounding ignorant, is Hank Hill indicative of the typical Texan male? I have seen enough episodes of ‘King Of The Hill’ to make me think ‘hmmm … Texas … well, uh … don’t know if I’ll make the effort to stop by in that neck of the woods when I go to the States …’.
Given that it has already been hinted that Middle America is more Simpsonesque than one would believe possible, is it possible that other animated television series based on the US could be sending foreigners geographical information by stealth?
This whole thread has proven to be extremely fascinating and insightful - kind of like a Lonely Planet special.
me… aussie high school student.
being a fan of them great american teen movie, american pie, clueless, ten things i hate about you etc. there’s a few things i really need to know.
do you have proms?
are they as exciting as the movies make out?
what is a corsiage(sp?), how do i get one and how much do they cost?
does anyone go to the prom if they don’t have a date?
do you have cheerleaders?
are they all perky and stupid (brittany from daria)?
are said cheerleaders universally hated by all?
are footballers idolised?
do they all have cheerleader girlfriends?
do you have a fashion club, and do you watch all your movies from projector reels?
does every school really have a cool popular kid - with a big house and cool parents - who has cool parties?
are drama students not cool?
do you have a lunchroom, and how often do you eat there? is it really disgusting?
can you be socially isolated by not sitting with certain people in the lunchroom?
are all the teachers weird?
is gym class scary, and why don’t you call it p.e?
what’s the deal with school uniforms? why don’t you have them?
do all students have really cool cars?
me being 18, doing my final year of high school - what would i be doing were i an american? would i be in college, would i be a high school senior, what?
is it at all safe to attend an american high school or is it a haven of firearms? for instance, when you hear of high school massacres, do you think ‘it was bound to happen what with all these students who take guns to school’, or is it more ‘glad i don’t go to that school’
and just in general…
why do you need a starbucks to buy coffee? don’t you have cafes? there are very few starbucks here in oz (i’ve never seen one, but apparently there are some), but we don’t have any problem getting a decent cup of coffee. actually, from what i’ve heard, starbucks coffee is pr’y disgusting.
are all the aussie bands that we get told are ‘making it big in america’ really gaining any decent exposure? for instance, have you heard of silverchair, savage garden, the living end, the avalanches or frenzal rhomb?
is it just my blind patriotism, or are australian girls really among the hottest in the world?
let’s see the high school questions…
Most if not all high schools have proms. Depending on your high school it might be a very big deal or just another dance. Depending on your school there might be a Junior Prom as well as a Senior Prom, for example. At my high school it was held at the Plaza Hotel, once of the fanciest hotels in NYC. Wherever you go there will be fancy dresses and tuxedos.
People go alone (“stag” as it is called) even if they don’t have dates, usually with a group of like minded friends. (as depicted in the movie “Never Been Kissed” where the math team all went together as DNA) I did not go to my prom for personal reasons. Most of my friends did go and had a good time. I don’t think it was THAT amazingly thrilling though. None that I know of lost their virginity on that night (those of a mind to lose it in HS had already done so).
A corsage is just a small bouquet of flowers worn by a woman, usually pinned to her dress. You can buy them in flower shops.
In some parts of the country high school football is a Very Big Deal. And the cheerleader thing too. I’m thinking of the South and some parts of the Midwest. In other parts its just another sport.
Many private schools (ie the ones you have to pay tuition to attend) require school uniforms. Most Public schools (free, funded by taxes) do not have school uniforms, although many have a “dress code” saying that you can’t wear certain types of clothes. I’m guessing but since Public schools are free – everything’s free, including the books and transportation if necessary – uniforms would be considered an unfair expense? Possibly its related to civil liberties as well (the government – ie school – would need a good reason to restrict the dress of the students).
Yes, there are always some extremely odd and/or nutty teachers in every high school. Most are kind of normal people though.
When I was a kid we had projector reels, nowadays most schools have VCRs and tvs on these mobile stands that everyone shares.
Most schools have a lunchroom, the disgustingness levels are highly variable. Note this thread on the subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=72080
Drama REALLY depends. At my school drama was something a lot of people participated in and was a fairly cool thing to do. Especially directing the student-run plays.
In most places in the country, people are liscenced to drive at 16. In most places, it is difficult if not impossible to go anywhere without the use of a car. So, getting a car at 16 or 17 is not unusual. However, unless your family is rather fabulously wealthy, or spoils you incredibly, this car is likely to be a very old, nasty car (“beater”)-- 1986 Toyota Corrolla held together with Bondo, 3rd-hand station wagon, etc. I was rather atypical, I grew up in New York City, where you cannot be liscenced till 18 and there is a lot of public transportation. So, hardly anyone in my high school had a car.
Most high schools are perfectly safe. Weapons do not abound in my experience. A student from my high school was killed by gunfire but the incident took place in a pool hall. It is much more common – I’m going to say almost universal – for high school students to die in fatal car crashes. Its very sad, really.
If you were 18, you would either be just starting your senior year of high school (it depends when your birthday is), or else you would be starting your freshman year of college, or, if you didn’t get into college, you would be joining the Armed Forces or getting a Real Job.
I’ve heard of Savage Garden and Silverchair. I wouldn’t say they were huge though. I haven’t heard of the other two – I’m not really cutting edge musicwise, though.
I have no opinion on Australian chix but count me in for one of the American ladies who goes ga-ga for an Australian accent on a man. <drool>
Not all cheerleaders are perky and stupid. Most of them are perky, or at least appear so in uniform–it kind of goes with the job. I’ve known cheerleaders who’ve graduated first in their classes. They’re not universally hated, although there are usually a few snobbish cheerleaders who are generally disliked.
Football players get more attention than they deserve (IMHO), at least in some schools. They don’t all have GFs, much less cheerleader GFs–there aren’t enough cheerleaders to go around anyway.
Cool kids with big houses and big parties were notably absent from my HS. We did tailgate parties at parks or out in the boonies, or really crowded parties at some regular Joe’s house. Party-hosting duties were shared.
The lunchroom was pretty disgusting. Meals were planned by people who had never even seen kids, much less fed them. Nothing was seasoned (and this in Louisiana, famous for its highly seasoned food), and vegetables were often served more-or-less direct from the can. I boycotted the cafeteria the entire time I was in HS, but many people ate there at breakfast and lunch (which were the only times anyone went there). I wouldn’t know about social isolation in the cafeteria, since I never went there–I sat around outside or in an empty classroom, reading or talking to my friends.
Not all teachers are weird–just the best ones.
We did call gym class “P.E” at my school. It was annoying, often smelly, and never remotely frightening (even for the fat kid, namely me).
Some public schools now have uniforms (this practice arose sometime in the 10 years since I graduated). I don’t like the idea, and would have been pissed off if they had instituted it while I was in school.
People brought firearms to my school all the time. I grew up in a rural area, and most trucks had rifle racks in the cab. During hunting season, people rarely bothered to take the rifles out before going to school. As a result, you could often find as many as 30 or 40 rifles, shotguns, and pistols (for shooting rattlesnakes while hunting) in the parking lot. Students would probably get expelled for that now. Nobody ever said anything at the time, and no one was ever shot at my school.
Originally posted by plnnr
**
Except in Texas where the rule is beef. Asking for pork BBQ in Texas is asking to be beaten.
*Originally posted by psychogumby *
**
I grew up in northeast Texas and went to school in Dallas and I think Hank Hill is VERY representative of Texans. The thing is you would probably have to grow up in Texas to be able to catch all the subtle little things that make it so accurate (the Tom Landry Middle School comes to mind).
There’s isn’t one type of typical Texas man, any more than there is one type of person in any region, but Hank Hill is a pretty good cartoon version of one kind of Texas man. “King of the Hill” is actually pretty accurate as far as its portrayl of Texas goes – you don’t see the sort of big hat and oil millionaire stereotypes that pop up in other shows. Of course, it is just a cartoon, so don’t treat it as a textbook.
Well gex gex several have already answered but I’ll take a crack at it as well.
do you have proms? Yes, for most schools the Senior Prom is THE social event of the year. At my school there were easily a dozen school sponsered dances. Most people made it to at least a few of them. Everyone went to the proms.
are they as exciting as the movies make out? No. It is hard for anything to match the level of expectation Hollywood creates. That said I greatly enjoyed the ones I went to.
do you have cheerleaders? While I’m ceratin there are schools in the US that don’t have them, I have never been to a game in the three states I’ve lived in that didn’t.
are they all perky and stupid (brittany from daria)? No. But it is a common misconception.
are said cheerleaders universally hated by all? No.
are footballers idolised? Not at my school. However success is very importaint in American culture (moreso than in others?), so being part of a successful group can bring idolization. Our chess team included one of the top ranked teen players in the world. So I probably went to one of the very few schools that would have cheerleaders and a large booster section at chess meets.
do they all have cheerleader girlfriends? A football can have 80 players (depending on the size of the school and local rules). An average cheerleading squad has 10-20 people (1/3 to 1/2 of which are male) so no.
do you have a fashion club, and do you watch all your movies from projector reels? My high school didn’t have a fashion club (or a least they never told me about it). But most schools encourage various student organizations so a fashion club would be allowed at most schools if the students wanted one. However to keep an official status they would generally have to accept all students or set very specific standards on who could be allowed in and stick to them. ANY complaint on being baised would get such a club closed down imediately.
Projectors used to be very common a little over 10 years ago. Today thay have been replaced by VCR/TV combos.
does every school really have a cool popular kid - with a big house and cool parents - who has cool parties? Mine didn’t or at least I wasn’t ever invited (fashon club, cool parties am I detecting a trend?). The parties I went to rarely had more than 20 or so people.
are drama students not cool? In my school the ‘cool’ kids were those involved in arts (music and drama) and academics. Geeks ruled.
do you have a lunchroom, and how often do you eat there? is it really disgusting? I ate at the lunchroom almost every day. The menus were good and varied. We had a ‘closed campus’ which meant that we were supposed to stay on school grounds all day. We weren’t allowed to leave and come back. Of course a lot of kids still left regularly. And all kids did so from time to time. But generally you either brought a lunch in ahead of time or ate at the cafeteria.
can you be socially isolated by not sitting with certain people in the lunchroom? My school was too big. We had around 2100 students in three grades. So there simply weren’t enough seats for everyone to sit together. I generally ate at the same table with the same 20 or so kids. Sometimes I would eat with a different group and there was generally no stigma attached. My school was quite open and you could move from social group to social group quite easily. There were no gangs or cliques at my school but there are in some schools.
are all the teachers weird? No. But the best ones were. 
is gym class scary, and why don’t you call it p.e? I never thought so. Pointless and boring? Yes. P.E. Stands for Physical Education. Some administrators simply like the sound of that better.
what’s the deal with school uniforms? why don’t you have them? Tradition. Most schools in the US are public not Parochial. 100+ years ago the schools were simply a teacher or two that the local town would pay to teach their kids. As they weren’t formal, things like uniforms never became popular. There is a growing movement in the US for public schools to require uniforms though.
do all students have really cool cars? I had a 10 year old Mercury Lynx that I shared with my sister, so no. Given how spread out American communities are, a car is very important to most students (especially if you want/need to work as well). But nice cars cost money that most students don’t have.
me being 18, doing my final year of high school - what would i be doing were i an american? would i be in college, would i be a high school senior, what? Americans turn 18 during or right after their final year of high school. School traditionally runs from Aug./Sept. to May/June. So if you are already 18, given that this is August, you would probably be preparing to enter college.
is it at all safe to attend an american high school or is it a haven of firearms? for instance, when you hear of high school massacres, do you think ‘it was bound to happen what with all these students who take guns to school’, or is it more ‘glad i don’t go to that school’ Schools are generally among the safest places in the US. The US has a very high murder rate around 120,000 a year. The relatively few deaths from school shootings (about a dozen a year over the past 5 or so years) are a drop in that bucket. They tend to get a lot of press because they are rare, shocking, and tragic. I doubt you could find a school that allows students to bring guns to school. Most will expel the student without discussion. In fact there are several cases where students have been expeled or suspended for remarkably light offenses. I know of at least one boy who left a penknife in his car after a camping trip and one girl who had perscription medications she had not cleared with the school. Both were suspended for violating the ‘Zero Tolerance’ weapon and drug policies at their schools.
why do you need a starbucks to buy coffee? don’t you have cafes? there are very few starbucks here in oz (i’ve never seen one, but apparently there are some), but we don’t have any problem getting a decent cup of coffee. actually, from what i’ve heard, starbucks coffee is pr’y disgusting. Cafes are actually fairly rare in many areas of the US. So yes you can consider Starbucks to be one of the equivalents. Pretty sad huh.
are all the aussie bands that we get told are ‘making it big in america’ really gaining any decent exposure? for instance, have you heard of silverchair, savage garden, the living end, the avalanches or frenzal rhomb? The only one I have seen get any exposure is Savage Garden. But I’m not into the music sceen myself.
*do you have proms? * As mentioned prevously, yes, and sometimes Junior Proms, as well. Also most schools will have a half-dozen or so other dances during the year (Homecoming, Sadie Hawkins {Where the girls make the date, not the boys}, etc). Most are held at a local banquet facility or in the school gym.
are they as exciting as the movies make out? Not hardly. Boring, typically, unless someone gets stupid, which might liven up the party for a minute or two.
what is a corsiage(sp?), how do i get one and how much do they cost? It’s a small bouquet, either strapped to a girl’s wrist, or pinned to her dress. Get the wrist version, as you’ll be much less likely to stab your date in the breast, and won’t get crushed flowers on your coat. US$35 or so should cover a decent one.
does anyone go to the prom if they don’t have a date? Ususally, yes, but mind you, there’s also a significant minority of students that just don’t “do” Proms, date or no date.
do you have cheerleaders? Never seen a highschool without some.
are they all perky and stupid (brittany from daria)? Typically, no.
are said cheerleaders universally hated by all? Typically, no.
are footballers idolised? Sometimes. Is it a big football school? In big football region? Is the team doing well? Is the player nice, handsom, and not a jerk? If all the preceeding=true, then yes. If else, then no.
do they all have cheerleader girlfriends? Sometimes, but usually not.
do you have a fashion club, and do you watch all your movies from projector reels? Fashion club??!! Fashion Club==Guaranteed social Death where I went to school. Until about 15 years ago, all movies were on film. Now, it’s all video or site closed-circuit TV.
does every school really have a cool popular kid - with a big house and cool parents - who has cool parties? Nope. Not usually. I was in luck, as there was a farm kid whose dad would let us hold flatbed parties in one of his pastures, but that was no more than twice a year. Any other time you went around there, you’d get the dogs set on you.
are drama students not cool? In my school? Drama was very cool.
*do you have a lunchroom, and how often do you eat there? * Every highschool I’ve ever seen has one.
is it really disgusting? It’s bland, more-or-less nutritionally ballanced institutional food. One cut above hospital food, in most cases.
*can you be socially isolated by not sitting with certain people in the lunchroom? * Not anywhere I’ve seen. There tends to be a loose clustering of like-minded individuals, but it’s pretty fluid, and there’s rarely enough open seating to allow for effective ostracism.
are all the teachers weird? There’s always at least one or two, and they tend to be quite popular. My school had over a dozen nutjobs on staff. Class was fun!
is gym class scary, and why don’t you call it p.e? Physical education is boring, poorly run in most schools, and mandated by law in most states. It also tends to smell bad.
what’s the deal with school uniforms? why don’t you have them? Because that might disadvantage poorer students. Some areas ar beginning to require them, but there had to first be put in place a means to buy the uniforms for the poorer students. Once that was done, the resistance to uniforms became negligable.
do all students have really cool cars? Nope. It’s cool to have any car at all. Cars that can hold lots of fellow students are a ticket to popularity, especially if it’ll keep them warm and dry at the same time. Mine was a huge old '70 Plymouth Grand Fury, and Oh Boy, was I popular!
me being 18, …would i be in college, would i be a high school senior, what? You’d be an about-to-graduate HS Senior, or an about-to-start College Freshman.
is it at all safe to attend an american high… <Sigh> The @%$&*! mass media strikes again. Highschools are safe, generally very safe. That’s why there’s so much attention paid to the freak happenings such as in Littleton.
why do you need a starbucks to buy coffee? don’t you have cafes? * Yeah, we’ve got cafes, coffee shops, restaurants, truck stops, and all the like. Most have acceptable coffee, some have dmn good coffee. Starbucks got it’s start in a snooty counter-culture manner, something along the lines of “we drink exotic coffee, so we’re better than you, even if we’ve no jobs and no prospects”. Then, the counter-culture types had to get jobs or starve, and son-of-a-gun, they found that having money was good. They brought their snooty coffe shop along with them into the mainstream, only it went frankenstein on them and became the McDonalds[sup]tm[/sup] of coffee houses. It’s not bad, but cost too d*mn much.
*are all the aussie bands that we get told are ‘making it big in america’ really gaining any decent exposure? * Silverchair and Savage Garden made a brief splash, but I’ve heard almost nothing about the others.
*is it just my blind patriotism, or are australian girls really among the hottest in the world? * I’ve been around the world twice now, and Aussie chicks tend to be pretty hot, but they’re not the hottest, by a fair bit. For that, you’d have to got to Halifax, Nova Scotia. IMO. Of course there’s a lot to be said for thinking the local tallent is the hottest around, as they are also available, so go right on thinking you’ve got the best, and I’m sure you’ll get your just rewards… 
I recently had a lot of time to talk with a British person who was making his first trip to the States. He said, “I’m suprised that you’re not all jerks. I expected everyone to be mean.” Most Americans are nice. Some American’s are mean, some are crazy, but most are pretty nice, unless you’re in NYC. Niceness moves west, so you’ll find that people are ruder in the east (to strangers, not among friends), and by the time you hit the west coast (excepting SoCal), everyone is your best friend.
The number one thing I can say about America: you will never experience everything it has to offer. I grew up in Ohio, and have lived in upstate NY for 5 years. There are very different mentalities, sayings, natural surroundings, and ways of life…and NY and Ohio are pretty close to each other. The south, the midwest, the southwest, the plains, the northeast, the west, etc, ALL have so many differences. I’ve been to 29 of the 50 states, and I still feel like I hardly know everything this country has to offer.
As far as patriotism and love of country is concerned, I don’t care what other people think: I think the US is the best in the world, and I’d die to protect it. I think most people in the US love their country, but most won’t show it. That’s all I’ll say right now.
Jman
Well, I think this has been already pretty well addressed, but my two cent’s worth…
Yes, we have them (where I went to school, everyone went to prom every year, even the freshmen). But of course, they weren’t very exciting, and yes, lots of people go stag (w/o a date).
Well, we didn’t officially have any, but we had some guys who thought this was a crime so did it themselves. Needless to say, they were not stereotypical chearleaders. They weren’t perky and stupid, they were universally revered, and they all had soccer player girlfriends. (Soccer players in general were idolized, because the soccer teams were good and the football team was wretched.)
We had a bajillion of them. So no one really stood out.
Yes, we did, and because we had a closed campus, we ate there often. We hated it, and a lot of people snuck off campus anyway. The cafeteria was hopelessly tiny given the size of the student body, so you grabbed whichever seat you could find, or else you took your food elsewhere.
Only the popular ones and the truly hated ones.
It makes me sick to say this, but having gone to a private school, most of the students did indeed have really cool cars. Not ALL of them (i.e., me), but way too many of them. I lived in mortal terror of parking on campus and accidentally dinging someone’s door.
UGH! I’m from Seattle, I love my coffee as much as the next Seattlite, but I loathe Starbucks. I don’t really like their coffee, and most of what I see served is stuff like “grande mocha latte, nonfat, decaf, with whipped cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, and hazelnut flavoring.” I mean, WTF? That’s not coffee! I get most of my coffee by making it myself (I DO get the beans from a snob store, though (not, naturally, Starbucks)), but when I go out for coffee, there’s a nice little cafe just down the road.
That, I couldn’t say. I’ve never had any complaints about the girls in Florida, though.
Well, this is true, but if you want to see what a massive chunk of American Lifestyle is like, watch the movies Gummo and Kids. They are both examples of some of America’s worst cultures, being from the Central area and Urban areas, respectively. But they are both great movies.
And despite what you’ve probably heard non-stop, Americans do not have golden wings, all the McDonald’s in America have “chill” areas that you can read or listen to music somewhere in their buildings, and we have a tradition of “shrieking” when a clock reads 3:35 (both the a.m. and the p.m.), but NOT in the month of May, that’s a ticketable offense. The shriek everyone uses is generally the same, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but most people enjoy it. I don’t really know how the tradition started, but I think it has something to do with Interstate Highways.
Come ‘ere boy, time for your wuppin’!
Yes.
No.
A bit of a flower you pin on somebody’s dress, or on their wrist, but that looks stupid.
Yep, me.
Yep.
Some are, some are the opposite. Most are somewhat normal except for being perky.
Not really. It depends on who you ask.
Not all of them, one of my friends (who I claimed was on the team to keep their average IQ above 90) dated one of the theatre program’s actresses.
Fashion club? Yeah, but no one cared. My middle school (Grades 6-8) used an old projector once, and there were some laying around my high school, but they mostly just used in-classroom TVs and VCRs.
Usually more than one. But they aren’t really cool.
No, we’re cool.
Some do, and many times it is.
Nope. At my school most people left for lunch.
Sometimes.
It’s hideously boring, and P.E. stands for Physical Education.
[teen]Dude, that’s like against the law or some shit.[/teen]
In general, Americans hate being forced to wear anything unless they get paid for it.
No.
[QUOTE]
me being 18, doing my final year of high school - what would i be doing were i an american? would i be in college, would i be a high school senior, what?
[QUOTE]
High school senior.
Safe? Not really, but that’s mostly because teenagers are hideous. They aren’t havens for firearms, but they are havens for over-reactions to pen knives and the like.
I’m not surprised they happen, since high schoolers are mostly conceited assholes.
Agreed, I like vending machine coffee over Starbucks.
No clue what you’re on about.
Probably.
Sorry, my high school and many other high schools in NYC had a single prom that nobody went to, 20 cheerleaders for a very lackluster basketball team, no football and no fields to practice in anyway, and I’ve never even heard of a “fashion club”. Drama, chess, debate, math and the ultimate frisbee team members were all cool. Only a few people owned cars because driving in NYC is pointless, and there was no non-teacher parking lot anyway. Few house parties since most of my friends lived in apartments with lots of brothers, sisters, grandmothers, etc. It wasn’t as grim as it probably sounds but there’s a lot of variety in the American HS experience and what you see in the movies is usually middle-class white suburban kids, who are common enough, but don’t take any of it as the norm.
My school, Bronx Science, was a public examination school, and you had to take a test to get in and were expected to go to a first-rate college when you got out. Imagine lots of competition compressed for four years, lots of striving immigrant kids, lots of lower-middle-class kids like me wanting to climb the ladder, all in a underfunded and decaying building. Most of us stayed at clubs after school or, like me, went to jobs to be able to help pay for college. Americans have to worry a lot about paying for university and it can often decide where you end up; fortunately, colleges and the federal government want a diverse student body and usually offer financial aid packages depending on need. Wellesley paid for half of everything for me but I was still paying off the student loans for ten years after graduation; people quite often come out of school, especially graduate school, with huge debts that mean we have to focus more on money in early jobs that we may like.
Boston is very small but very diverse. One thing you have to understand about the older American cities is the importance of neighborhoods; folks will say they’re from Dorchester, or Flatbush, or Beacon Hill, or whatever, and their schools and churches and stores will all be there. In Boston, history is very important, and Revolutionary War sites are cherished and preserved with a lot of pride. Intellectual life is extremely important there, with famous colleges everywhere from Harvard to Brandeis to Tufts to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, etc. Cities like Boston and Princeton and Berkeley will have a different rhythm than cities without large student populations. And no, Boston is not covered with snow for eight months out of the year. But in general the weather in America is more extreme than in Australia; we have every world climate from sub-tropical to tundra somewhere in the country, and so energy policy is very important. Paying for heat is a real problem for poorer people in the northern cities, and there are “good neighbor” programs where better-off folks can subsidize those not as well off.
How to start about New York City? We’re not as “friendly” on the surface because there are just too many people around, and there’s no time to be strolling along smiling vacuously at everybody. If somebody starts a conversation with you they almost always will end up asking for money or, in my case, if I wanted “to be a model”, so we don’t respond to strangers very readily. The sidewalks are our highways and if we’re maybe pushing aside your wide, shorts-clad, fanny-packed, tourist butt a little impatiently it’s because you’re basically going 35 mph in our fast lanes. Out-of-towners don’t understand this and often think that New Yorkers are rude; but ask us polite, direct questions and we’re as sweet and helpful as anybody. Crime is down drastically under Giuliani and it never was as bad as people think, anyway; I travelled the subways in the big bad Seventies when I was 13, and nothing bad ever happened to me at all. I saw some nasty beggars, but that was it.
As for the beggars and homelessness, Americans are not at all indifferent to it. But what I don’t think people understand sometimes is that the freedom to succeed here also means you have the freedom to fail just as hard. The government will not put as many barriers on your way to the top but it will also put less cushions down if you fall. And if you fell because you drink or do drugs, there’s much less sympathy for you than if you were thrown out by your parents or abusive husband. There are cushions, though–unemployment compensation, Social Security, disability payments, tax deductions for children, etc. only not as much as in Europe.
Generally, if you want vacation time, sick time, severance pay, etc., it will be between you and your employer since no government mandates any of those things. All the more incentive to better yourself through education and training to get the higher-paying jobs that give such perks. Of course, certain groups have never had the same chances as everyone else, and how to rectify this is an ongoing debate; but almost everybody agrees that it should be rectified somehow. But it’s your responsibility; the government will try to correct the most egregious injustices with laws against sexual harrassment and racist hiring, but mostly you’re on your own, and to be fair the schools will usually try hard to prepare you if you let them. Money for schools comes from the surrounding tax base and not from any centralized government, so there’s a lot of differing standards for different parts of each state. Basically, each group has to decide what is important to them and how much they’ll pay for it; they’re reponsible for making their own decisions.
And that ties into a lot of other things about America. I’ve never lived in a state that had the death penalty (although NY has it on the books but hasn’t used it yet) and I oppose it for the same reason I oppose abortion–no human being has the right to take the life of another, no matter how incovenient or despicable they are–but I can understand those who believe in it. It’s not that they hold life cheap, it’s that they think it’s so important that those who have deprived others of it should be deprived of it as well.
Lacking a single national story or religion, we’ve sort of made a fetish–IMO–of the law. Hey, there are worse things to focus on but it means that if you break it, the system will be pretty tough on you. And the laws are so different for different states that it can be very confusing sometimes. Guns are a good example–Massachusetts has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country and a very low crime rate, but most of the guns that are used come from the South or New Hampshire, which is right on its border and has few laws (and not a particularly high crime rate itself, actually). Same in NYC. States and their different cultures affect each other in a million ways and there’s always friction, not just Texas and California jokes but fights in our Congress about basic things like transportation and farm subsidies–North and South Dakota want something for 1000 soybean farmers, and New York wants something for two million commuter rail riders? Well, there’s four Dakota senators and only two for New York, you do the math! However, if it was totally proportional the sparsely populated states wouldn’t get anything, so it sort of evens out.
Americans don’t believe 90% of the ads and Hollywood images they see, and are always bemused and a little mortified that the rest of the world thinks they’re like that. I had an Italian-American friend who went to Italy and had a hard time convincing her distant cousins that she was American because they thought all Americans were blondes. The really good movies and TV shows often aren’t exported or buried under the big and splashy stuff; TV like HOMICIDE or FREAKS AND GEEKS will never be able to get as many foreign stations as FRIENDS or BAYWATCH, yet you’ll learn more about America from those shows than from practically anywhere else.
We’re not all religious fanatics and the noisy Christians you hear a lot about are not everywhere; no Chick tracts or Jesus fish anyplace I’ve ever lived. But even if not every group that settled the land came for religious freedom, enough of them did so that it’s important to us, and even the most hardened athiest wouldn’t go around tearing scarves off Muslim women’s heads or knocking down eruvs in Orthodox neighborhoods or splashing paint on a cardinal or something. The occasional friction is reported because it’s so unusual, not because it’s so common. BTW, I was interested to hear that African-Americans (most of whom don’t live in ghettos or carry guns, thank you) would be especially welcomed in your country given the history with your Aborigines.
Finally, there is a sort of indifference to the rest of the world in a lot of people. Maybe it’s because America is so big and you can “visit” a lot of the world just by going to various neighborhoods or climes. Maybe it’s a leftover bit of Manifest Destiny, the 19th century belief that America had the right and the duty to settle the continent. Maybe it’s because our neighbors haven’t posed any sort of threat to us militarily since 1848, and we’ve never been invaded. But maybe it’s also the sense that we’re the New World, and the rest of the world represents everything we all fled from, everything that didn’t work, everything that held people down, everything that didn’t want us around, whether it was an English king enclosing our land or a slave trader selling us to the foreigners.
Sometimes we take it too far. But hell, that’s still another American trait!
I read the story from whence came your screen name, TheLoadedDog, and I’ll venture to say most Americans are with me when I ask,
“What the hell does &emdash mean?”
It seemed like “&emdash” appeared in every other line, completely confusing me. I respectfully ask WTF?
Or maybe it’s just that most of us can’t drive a couple of hours and be in another country. Europe is fairly compact and the various countries have similar standards of living. People visit their neighbouring countries with some regularity. In the U.S. we have only Canada and Mexico. (I haven’t heard of anyone driving to our Caribbean neighbours.) Canada has a standard of living and a culture similar to ours and many Americans dive up there. My best fiend lives in northern Washington and it’s closer for him to drive to Vancouver, B.C. than it is for him to drive to Seattle. But I live in Los Hideous. If I drive for two hours I’ll be getting close to San Diego (my sister’s place is 134 miles from me), Barstow (in the middle of the Mojave Desert) or Santa Barbara (up the coast). And I’m still in California. I could go to Mexico, but they have some problems with corruption. (For example, an American was in an accident and needed urgent medical care that could only be provided in the U.S. But he was virtually held for ransom until it was too late to save him. In another case, a man was held in prison for many years on a trumped up charge because he wouldn’t pay a large bribe to get out of it. My ground school instructor used to fly in Mexico frequently and he advised carrying extra cash to pay for the required formalities that are supposed to be free.) It’s getting better though. Many, many Americans visit Mexico, and many visit Canada. But they are really not close to the rest of the country.
The point is that without close borders with other countries we are somewhat isolated. I think this is what leads to a lot of our cluelessness of other cultures and countries. Australians seem to be well informed though, and they live on a big island. Hm. Maybe my perception is faulty.
&emdash; or — (non-standard) em-dash “&emdash;” or “—”.
It’s an HTML character code.
I agree with McKenna’s description of NYC. In my experience, niceness appears to “move west” because the lifestyle is less hurried to the west. However, the ultimate acts of niceness seem to happen in New York, e.g. bystanders tackling subway pushers (though just yesterday a would-be victim grabbed his own pusher and held him down), massive donations to funds for families of deceased “heroes”, etc.
It’s analogous to the old conundrum “if California is so crunchy, why do all of the supreme archconseravtives seem to come from there?”
Anyway, two little things to add:
A block from my apartment, there is a grown man in a skintight Superman costume who yells “Look, look, everybody look” all day in an attempt to attract buyers to his “employer”'s street vendor table.
Savage Garden. Aren’t they the ripoff Roxette? Sad.
Monk