Oxy-Moron

The Lindis Pass

Many years ago, I got to know an older gentleman who my friends and I quickly christened “Erhart, ze Happy Bavarian”. Erhart was a lovely guy and a beautiful skier by any measure despite his advanced age, and he had a wonderfully positive outlook at all times. Erhart grew up in Garmisch Partenkirchen in Bavaria – Garmisch is a legendary alpine town that was among the first places liberated by Allied Forces during World War II, and it remains today a major R&R station for American armed forces personnel. Having grown up in Garmisch during the difficult post-war years, Erhart developed a love for Americans and for the idea of America that he clung to with both hands when I knew him. He traveled to the USA often for work and, interestingly, the first thing he did each time he arrived in America was to buy a Hershey’s chocolate bar. In the context of his youth surrounded by GI’s who represented all that was great and good in America in that most optimistic time for our country, the symbolism of a simple Hershey’s bar is clear – its iconic packaging in the same way as a Coca-Cola bottle; its uniquely sweet, American-style milk chocolate; and the vivid olfactory memories it triggered of the friendly, outgoing, active and exuberant men in uniform who handed them out to the kids in the streets of Germany and who were his first exposure to the people of the New World.

The men and women in uniform that inhabited Erhart's childhood memories precisely matched his movie heroes and, therefore, his media exposure to Americans – Gregory Peck, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and the like. They continued to inform his view of our country and to stoke his imagination of it, and this was downright inspirational to me at the time we met. Unfortunately, my experience as an American overseas makes clear that young adults around the world take a vastly different view of who we are as a people. I am certain, however, that most people around the world who have any substantial and substantive interaction with Americans abroad continue to have a generally positive view of us as a people. By ‘substantive’ I am not referring to the Americans on tour in a bus, rather the Americans who take the time on the ground to experience the places they visit. We are genuinely friendly, inquisitive, confident and easy going. So what’s my point? About what am I groaning this time?

The problem for Americans at the moment is that, in my view, most people around the world do not have real interaction with Americans but they do see a lot of America on TV and in the media. And by a lot of America, I do not mean that they see a good cross-section of our country. I meant that they see a high volume of some parts of America, and those parts are not generally positive, not indicative of who we are, and definitely not flattering. Jersey Shore is not what 99.9% of Americans would choose to show to the world as an example of who we are as a people, but that type of exposure is precisely what most of the world sees of us. It may be hard to stomach, but The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reaches homes around the globe and Prairie Home Companion does not. Entertainment Tonight, not Walter Cronkite. Swamp People, not Newhart. Baseball made the news here in New Zealand when A-Rod’s steroid use and his lying about it became such a big story this year, but the terrific resurgence of the Pittsburgh Pirates and what it says about small market teams and our love of the national pastime was nowhere to be seen.

Thankfully, there are enough people around here in New Zealand who have some inkling of the sea change as between their parents (and grandparents) understanding of who we are as a people and modern, media-fueled tom-foolery. They often ask me to explain things to them that they hear from the media, and I do my best to be honest about our strengths and weaknesses as a nation and as a people while making clear my unvarnished and unapologetic love of my country. Still, the whole process does leave me a bit uncomfortable. Snooky definitely is not Jimmy Stewart, and it’s not always clear whether I’m clinging to out-of-date concepts of who we are or there really is a gap between media and reality. Let’s call it ‘reality TV as oxymoron’, with the emphasis on the moron.

By calling ‘em like I we ‘em, by expressing who we are and what we think, by being opinionated but informed and liberal thinking (with a lower case ‘l’), we Americans who live here in Wanaka do provide a living example every day of the kind of nation we are and aspire to be. Warts and all. Some days, the mighty Casey does strike out and there’s just no joy in Mudville, but I do always end my days confident that open-minded people understand who we are, how different we are from place to place in America, and how it can be that the things that we share across our country are those things that make us great as a nation.

I do love Wanaka and New Zealand. I feel very welcome and comfortable here, and I enjoy my time here immensely. Still, I miss home while I’m away and I’ll be glad to get back to America soon. In the meantime, it’d be a lot easier for me down here if only I could get a decent sandwich, for crying out loud. How are those damn Yankees doing anyway?

North Otago high country near Omarama, NZ

Lake Ohau with Mount Cook / Aoraki in the distance