TriumphAnt

At our home, we invest an hour or so each year in watching the last part of the Boston Pops 4th of July spectacular on TV, because it always ends with some pretty amazing fireworks.

The orchestra’s musical run-up to the first aerial explosion always features some wonderful medleys from the US patriots’ universal songbook, including “God Bless America”, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”, “Yankee Doodle” and its bastard son “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, and “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”, the Americans’ own lyrical application to music stolen from the British anthem, “God save the Whatever gender of monarch is on the throne”. (For the record, theft of patriotic music is not confined to US nationalists. When the Pops orchestra played Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land”, my wife and I gleefully sang its Canadianized chorus: “from Bonavista to Vancouver Island; from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters…”)

For the fireworks this year, as in past years, they had arranged some incredibly intricate co-ordination between the explosions and their accompanying music. But this year surpassed anything we’ve seen before. At its most astonishing, the lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s version of “Wonderful World” featured sky-colouring bursts of tree-shaped green clusters at the precise moment one heard, “I see trees of green…”, followed immediately by a flood of red as in the next breath Mr Armstrong sings, “Red roses too…”

But it was with the line, “The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are there on the faces of people going by” that fireworks technology revealed just how far it has come. The sky erupted in first in a breathtaking multi-coloured single burst – one amazing explosion of an enormous gasp-inducing palette that covered the sky with all the colours of the rainbow!) followed, on “faces…”, by a series of bursts that showed themselves to be the ubiquitous “smiley” faces, complete with circle outline, smile and eyes. And, finally, with “They’re really sayin’ ‘I love you’”, the sky bursts were beautifully rendered heart-shaped outlines of sparkle. Heart-shaped fireworks explosions!

(It occurs to me that if the US military really wants to win the hearts and minds of people like those in Iraq on whom they are still desperately trying to impose “freedom and democracy”, they should use some of these to punctuate their “shock and awe” attacks, for those occasional moments when a blast misses a military target and levels a building full of civilians seeking shelter. Nothing says “Whoops!” like a towering fireball in the shape of a gigantic heart capped with a twinkling smiley face. But I digress.)

But awe and the taking of breath aside, there is also something that is really unsettling about the way that some “my country right or wrong” Americans hurl themselves at the 4th of July. This year, one thing that really churned my stomach was a moment during the especially jingoistic coverage of New York City’s fireworks, sponsored by Macy’s.

Now I will grant that New York City unquestionably has a much stronger claim than a lot of other US sites on the right to pound the drums of patriotism. So several wrenching reminders of the World Trade Centre losses can be forgiven on a day devoted to celebrating all that is great about being Born in the USA. But I gagged when a screen cutout presented a moment by a national journalist talking about how great it is to live and work in the United States of America, with freedom of speech to a degree that is the envy of the world, and a society that allows for the freedom of dissenting voices to be heard without fear of suppression or reprisal. Right. The good reporter has obviously missed a big chunk of the coverage surrounding the release of the new Michael Moore film, “Fahrenheit 911”, to wit:

1. “Another group, Move America Forward out of Sacramento, has organized boycotts of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ claiming, among other things, that the film is a recruiting tool for the al-Qaida and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. ‘I’m thrilled that we have been able to get the word out and let people know that this is not journalism or a documentary – it’s Moore’s opinion,’ said Siobhan Guiney, executive director of Move America Forward. ‘We just don’t want the unsuspecting public to walk in and think they are seeing a documentary from an objective perspective.’" (Palm Springs Desert Sun, June 25th 2004)

2. “A rightwing US pressure group (Citizens United) is calling for a ban on television advertising for Michael Moore's controversial film Fahrenheit 9/11, claiming it amounts to "electioneering’ .“
(Guardian Unlimited, July 5th 2004)

So sure, it’s a “free speech” society, you betcha! But just be sure that your speech produces commentary that conforms to the present Conservative Style Guide. If it doesn’t, the First Amendment be damned! (That’d be the one with a part that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”.) Too bad the spirit of the US Constitution’s prohibition against Congress’ abridging free speech hasn’t percolated down to vested interest organizations, especially those who share an attitude with Citizens United or the oxymoronically named “Move America Forward.”

To close -- a couple bits and pieces:

From the “Big enough to admit when we’re wrong (and how!)” department comes the following correction that appeared in a recent issue of the New York Times: "An account in the Soccer Report column on June 22 about Ethan Zohn, a former player in Zimbabwe who won $1 million on the CBS reality show ‘Survivor: Africa’ in 2002 and has capitalized on his moment of fame by starting an international nonprofit AIDS awareness foundation on the continent, misstated a word in a comment he made. Mr. Zohn said, ‘We can make value judgments all we want, but through some cultural differences it has been all right for men in Africa to have multiple sex partners’ -- not ‘all right for me.’”

And finally, I’m assuming that the Ottawa Police and Fire Department arson investigation units read the Ottawa Citizen and have already checked out this possible lead in their search for what started a huge weekend fire that destroyed an east end strip mall. From the Citizen’s July 5th coverage of the fire’s aftermath: “Among the businesses destroyed by the fire was Pure Class Tattoos, owned by Mike Osborn, who didn't have insurance. Mr. Osborn said yesterday that he'd met with an insurance agent last week and had an appointment to sign the papers today. ‘I think I'm screwed good,’ he said. At the still-flaming scene yesterday afternoon, the 32-year-old businessman, who was married in March, said he couldn't bear to stay around for very long to watch as bulldozer crews knocked down the walls to help put out the fire. Mr. Osborn said his tattoo parlour had only been up and running for about a month. ‘We were doing good. It was taking off, on fire… ‘ “

Uh huh.