AMERICANS AND GEOGRAPHY

It is a well-known fact among Europeans that when it comes to geography most Americans are pretty much clueless. Why? Not sure. Maybe it’s because “Americans don’t have maps”, as Miss Teen South Carolina suggested last year in this “enlightening” video www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww Or maybe it’s because the average education level in the States is lower than that of a fifth grader, as the show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” implies (watch this geography-related extract from the show to see what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEP7uti0PDw ) Who knows? Fact is that when it comes to finding their own country on a map, only one fifth of Americans are able to do so successfully; and their knowledge of states, capitals and all that “geography stuff” is blurry at best. That percentage does not include only high-school dropouts, as one might assume, but also highly educated individuals, such as presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Democratic voters love Obama, not just for his charisma, his message of hope and his promise of change, but also for his class and oratory talents, which are a much needed departure from the abysmal ignorance and arrogance of George W. Bush, who, with his creative grammar (picture Francesco Totti as leader of the free world) and unique interpretation of scientific, historical and political facts, has embarrassed this country incessantly for eight long years. Which is why, when Obama gave his speech in Oregon on May 10 and declared to have “visited 57 states, [had] one more to go, [but was] not allowed to visit Alaska and Hawaii” (that’s 57+1+2= 60 states), people like me didn’t know what to make of it (see video and LA Times blog post http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/new-patriotic-o.html) However, since the candidate has yet to acknowledge or correct his mistake, I’m going to be humble and assume that he knows something I don’t know, that maybe, if he gets elected, America will annex 10 brand new states to the union.

Come on, people, all together now: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

This entry was posted on 16. May 2008 at 16:58 and is filed under AMERICANATA, Americans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.