Recently I thought, “Man, Yankee culture is sure different from ours!”
Does that make any sense to you? I mean, put magic angel wings, or something, on a movie camera and fly it across the international border —heading south, of course— and except for the farms being of a different size (stupid government!) there is no difference in streets, canals or buildings. A matching infrastructure and technology argues for a matching culture, right?
Then how dare I be “a racist” by saying there’s a difference across the two sides of the 49th parallel? (Or else “a country-ist”) After all, as Captain James T. Kirk’s hero, Abraham You-Know-Who said, and I paraphrase, “Both sides speak the same language, read the same Bible and pray to the same God…”
I dare in part because here in Great White North we use many of their textbooks and films in our colleges. (In English, that is… not Spanish) I will never forget the very first day of my Introduction to Rehabilitation class. We showed a filmstrip with painted still scenes: a cassette would play, a horn would honk, and a student would advance the film to the next frame. The topic was “Handicappism.” I remember one scene was of a cocktail party where people were pretending not to be scandalized by a man, not a woman, having a black pirate hook for a hand. Our department head taught that class—a smart lady, with a Ph.D.—but she went went out of the room while the filmstrip played. When she came back we freshmen asked her, “Why is it handicappism to say, ‘Some of my best friends are handicapped’?” She had no idea.
A few seasons later, as a group of us were standing with our beers in a university student lounge, a Gay student said something to make me think, Eureka!
Back then we capitalized Gay, as we did Black. The term “Gay” was a new-improved, woman’s liberation, gender-free, “good speaking” (English for the Latin term euphemism) word. Every right-thinking person—a minority—said “Gay” because the terms “homosexual” and “lesbian” had a stigma, a term to be snarled—
—like how our poor parents couldn’t help snarling out the name of Hitler, a name that today kids can say as gently as Napoleon Bonaparte—who’s last name, come to think of it, was used for the “Bogie man.” I guess one might be “proud to be more liberated” than our great-grandparents in Europe, who heartily disliked that little French tyrant. I’m not sure that non-hatred means “liberation,” but there you go.
The Gay student said he didn’t like anyone saying, “Some of my best friends are Gay.”
I thought: Now I get it… A real friend is someone who helps advance your equal rights—as I was doing: In fact, a pro-Gay letter of mine made it into The Herald, our city broadsheet newspaper. And then was reprinted in another paper, next to a cartoon of two bare-shouldered woman in bed. One is holding a handset on a curly cord, and is saying to the other, “It’s my mother. Quick, think of something heterosexual to say…”
Naturally, the cartoon was not intended as a put-down of straights, although you gotta admit, straights in that era were awfully thick headed: that’s a Politically Correct thing for me to say in your brave new century, since I myself was a member of that era—and I remember clearly. But no, the cartoon was to poke gentle fun at the whole sad situation we all found ourselves in.
Anyways, there in that lounge, I thought wrong. I still didn’t get it.
A few years later I read where a summer stage comedian was doing the “Borsch Belt,” a chain of country clubs in the US north east. As it happens, he was a person of Jewish heritage—
—And hey, let’s not spit out the word “Jew.” Not after there’s been a holocaust. I mean, I would only call you “a person with a gimpy leg” not “a gimp.” And I’d never say, “Netin Yahoo, my gimp friend…”
Anyways, he’s standing up there telling his jokes and mentions, “…some of my best friends are Jews…” Instantly, all through the crowd, dark looks of consternation appear. He thinks, “Uh-oh.” He hastens to add, “Including my relatives!”
He related this incident because to him it’s funny. Ya, but I still don’t get it… Oh well, my department head probably still doesn’t get it either. All I can say is, “Yankees are sure different from us.”
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Not exited about school starting,
But still into young students getting liberated and sharing ideas,
September
2025
Footnotes:
~As for my recent thoughts—wait, do Yankees mind being called Yankees? I mean, there’s a movie called Those Damn Yankees. Better to say “someone south of here.”
My culture thoughts were sparked by a southern professor. I wrote about him in my August 20 piece, The US Being Silly About University.
~Essays are like novels, the best stories need time to sneak up on the thesis. Which means if your attention span has been ruined by needing a television commercial every X minutes, then you may miss out on some deep themes.
In my sign-off I mentioned “school starting.” For why that’s relevant to today’s not-so-classic essay, see the idea sneaked up on in Paul Graham’s latest piece, The Shape of the Essay Field https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html
