… American Tragedy | Nidra Poller | The Blogs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This doesn't sound like the country I've travelled around in. The author of the piece may have grown up in Philly, but she seems to have lost touch with it. I lived in Germantown for 20 years. It's a big place. And yes, there's been an increase of violence lately in in East Germantown. West Germantown seems to be much as it's always been. I could also directed the guy to a good German restaurant right outside the city in Rockledge. There's a German deli there, too. And, as I was telling Dave, if he visited Wisconsin, he missed lutefisk country (out past Soldiers Grove).
Sounds to me as if this guy had an agenda.
Please catch up on Jewish humour.
ReplyDeleteEveryone has an agenda, myself included. And you.
But mostly, you sound rather defensive.
One of the most ignorant statements in that review, reflecting what may be the reviewer's own prior assumptions, is the reference to "the nearest crime-ridden ghetto where the diversity, uniformly black or Hispanic, actually lives." In fact, a majority of non-white Americans—black, Hispanic, and Asian—live in suburbs, and the last census showed that they represent more than a third of the suburban population in the U.S. overall. What a bizarre, misleading picture he paints.
ReplyDeleteAnd Frank is right: It would be super-easy to point any traveler with free time to numerous communities in the U.S. with German roots, from Pennsylvania to Iowa to Alabama. Tenenbom must not have been looking very hard.
I don't give a darn what sort of criticism people from outside the U.S. want to lob at us. Lob away! We can take it. I like any honest assessment, including negative ones, because it's instructive to see my country through outsiders' eyes. But can those critics, humorists or not, at least not equate their anecdotes and random encounters with facts?