Letters to America

This new blog lets the world say things to our faces. It's a good idea -- at least you know the people who write these things will be addressing you, not someone in their homeland. But take your blood-pressure medicine anyhow. It will teach you how far behind we are in presenting ourselves to the world. There's more than one cause for that, of course. But I'm beginning to wonder if it's coincidence that the people with the most dour and cynical views of America all protest that they love Hollywood movies and American television -- which tend to offer up a consistently dour and cynical view of America. I'm aware of the argument that says the ability to write, speak, film, and publish that way about your homeland is one of the great advertisements to the world of our freedoms. That it is. But when that's all you've got, how is that different than peeing in the public pool?