[lit-ideas] Explaining America to Europeans
- From: cblitid@xxxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2013 08:00:25 +0100
Although not American myself, as a fromer neighbour (Canadian) I am
often asked by Germans and other Europeans to elucidate or explain
various aspects of American social, political and cultural life.
This morning when I turned on the radio the local community station
(Kiel-FM) was laying the song 'Hang on Sloopy' (bringing back a flood
of memories - but I digress ...).
My 'co-listener' (although approximately a generation younger) also
recognized the song, but neither of us could put our mental fingers on
the name of the group performing it, so of course we looked it up ...
.. and were both intrigued to learn that the song (as recorded, by the
way, by The McCoys) is the official rock song of the sate of Ohio.
Certain clauses in the political act that made this so were of
particular interest to my European companion. I quote from Wikipedia:
"In April 1985, a columnist for the Columbus Citizen-Journal, saw a
wire service story about a proposal to designate 'Louie, Louie' as the
official State song of Washington and wrote a story about it. Both the
public and its elected officials --most importantly, the 116th Ohio
General Assembly became aware their State lacked an official song as a
result of the exposure from his commentary. They designated 'Hang on
Sloopy' as the State rock song by House Concurrent Resolution 16 on
November 20, 1985, with clauses including:
"'WHEREAS, 'Hang on Sloopy' is of particular relevance to members of
the baby boom generation, who were once dismissed as a bunch of long-
haired, crazy kids, but who now are old enough and vote in sufficient
numbers to be taken quite seriously...'
"and
"'WHEREAS, Adoption of this resolution will not take too long, cost
the State anything, or affect the quality of life in this State to any
appreciable degree, and if we in the legislature just go ahead and
pass the darn thing, we can get on with more important stuff.'"
I'm not sure how much, but some insight into some aspects of American
social, political and cultural life was thus gained.
Chris Bruce,
humming along in
Kiel, Germany
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