Word Back: America, Part 1: More a circus than a country

I began to write this Word Back column as Memorial Day weekend began. I was making fun of what America has become in 2025 but forgot about what America has been in my lifetime. I kept hearing the voices of all of those departed family members who served their country. They are gone but not silent. Their voices still ring out in the bardo.

If I attached no value to my lifetime on Earth, 1950-present, how could I value the present or maybe what the present should be? If I let the Trump years define my view of my country, well, then I will be stuck with that the rest of my days. That may be the source of so much anger among my Boomer friends. We remember a different country.

Really, though, what is the America I am mourning? Some of that is one forged by the family, the church, the Boy Scouts, and Catholic school. I can bore anyone of the younger generation with tales of the ‘burbs. “I remember when…” Not a conversation starter at a holiday gathering. MEGO! It’s just a part of our transitions along life’s timeline. We are forgettable and boring. Not to all. There is always one person who is curious about times gone by. I can see it in their eyes. The crowd will thin out and there’s one little person left, high school or college kid. I mention something that makes him/her think. A book, a film, an event. Maybe it’s my life as a writer, my career as an arts worker. It sounds more exotic than it really is but it’s my life, my truth. It is being destroyed daily which really give it a nostalgic feel.

What to make of America? Strangely enough, it may be Bob Hope. He was America’s comedian, a stand-up before stand-up was in the dictionary. I was looking for a list of performers at University of Florida’s Gator Growl, a homecoming ritual at Florida Field. I had been looking for a comedy skit that featured a chorus of “God Bless Vespucciland,” a satiric take on “God Bless America” substituting Vespucciland for America or Americus Vespucci, namesake of Americans North and South.

I thought: that sounds like something Firesign Theater would do. Remember them? Of course you don’t. They were part of a wave of satiric performers who emerged in the late-60s and early-70s as part of the counterculture. They were the stage-version of National Lampoon, a less druggy Cheech and Chong, a more buttoned-down version of Saturday Night Live and Second City. Firesign’s skits were edgy and brainy.

To appreciate “God Bless Vesapucciland,” you have to know America’s origins which you knew from school, home, and Scouts. You might ask here: what version of American history are you referring to? Is it Lynne Cheney and Newt Gingrich version or is it Howard Zinn’s? Is it the Christian Nationalist version wherein Jesus rode his dinosaur to an all-White private school? Or a world that’s millions and billions of years old and The Big Bang gave us the building blocks of homo sapiens with a few hiccups along the way?

Read Part 2 Friday