*** Really, is America a grumpy nation? Disgruntled, pissed off? So divided that just about nobody gets along with the Joneses next door? True or false? Answer in this segment of our Explaining USA series: false! ***
by Willem Meiners
WHO ARE these people who insist that America bitterly and angrily towards a precipice like a pack of lemmings? Where do these folks live? And who are they talking about?
Because the reality is that America is laughing. Two weeks or so ago, comedian Jon Stewart performed a standup at a Los Angeles theater in front of 6,000 people. A day later, John Mulaney filled the Hollywood Bowl. John who? He’s also a comedian. Standing room only, 17,000 people. Then it was Ali Wong’s turn, same profession, smaller theater with 2,000 seats, but contracted to do her gig 12 days in a row: 24,000 laughers. All inside that one town, within a five-mile radius.
Americans are having fun. Last year they spent a billion dollars for sitting an hour and a half in a seat watching a comedian doing their latest standup routine. A record, twice as much as in 2017, before Covid. Netflix is leading the pack streaming live performances by comedians. Five hundred shows in the first two weeks of May alone.
AMERICA SINGS. Over the past 13 months, the granddaughter of Grandma Meulenkamp from Gelderland performed in 53 American cities. More than 70,000 people filled the stadium in Pittsburgh to see and hear Taylor Swift. More than 80,000 in New York. In Houston: 70,000. Nearby in Austin: 80,000. One hundred thousand in Los Angeles, 140,000 in Seattle. And Taylor wasn’t the only one. Beyoncé also filled sold-out stadiums everywhere last year, as did Bruce Springsteen of the Springsteen family from Groningen, the Netherlands. One big party every time, and a new record everywhere.
America is cheering and roaring from the bleachers. Last season, 18 million people went to an NFL stadium, an average of 70,000 spectators per game. Brotherly side by side, no hooliganism, no smoke bombs that got tossed on the pitch, nothing. The only smoke is seen outside the stadium, in the parking lots, when people fire up their barbecue on pickup tailgates two hours before the game begins: tailgate parties!
Also last season: 22 million Americans attended a basketball game, an average of 18,000 per game, a record. Major league baseball: a whopping 70 million visitors, an average of 30,000 per game, also a record. Entire families coming together, peanuts, a dog and a beer, ice cream for the kids. Fun.
FOR AMERICA is having fun, more than ever. Cinemas are filling up again, still not as many as before the pandemic, but already much better than just since: 240 million moviegoers last year. Broadway in New York showed a similar picture: 12 million visitors, well on its way to matching the pre-covid record.
And America is eating, out as so often, and today more than ever. Bars and restaurants are suffering from staff shortages, in a hospitality sector with 15 million jobs. America’s 750,000 establishments are packed, but because the economy is doing so well, everyone who wants to work has a job. And so it isn’t easy for owners and managers to fill their demand for staff. The guests are not to blame. Together they spent a billion dollars last year, more than ever before.
Notably on weekends. In the US, five times more people work from home than five years ago, before Covid. Those don’t likely go to a restaurant for lunch. But they want to eat out just as much, therefore more and more people are doing so more comfortably, staying longer and spending more, on weekends. Younger generations in particular are looking for something new, sometimes at the expense of legacy names such as Red Lobster that is fighting to keep bankruptcy at bay. But fancy bars offering bingo (!) and even fancier cocktails are flourishing.
America laughs, sings, cheers, eats and drinks. Together. Massively. It’s not a country made up of angry citizens who can’t agree on anything. Except when it comes to politics, but then again, politicians’ antics in Washington give every reason for regular folks to get worked up. But more angry citizens than ever? Hell no, image you’d been around during the run-up to the Civil War. Or when labor unions came fighting with the robber barons on their own turf in the late nineteenth century. Or when 20,000 Nazi sympathizers came to demonstrate in Madison Square Garden in 1939 and there were just as many counter-demonstrators waiting for them outside in the streets. Or when men and women took to the streets in Selma, Alabama to demand their civil rights.
SO THEN, is no one ever angry, infuriated or perceiving injustice? Of course they are, just like everywhere else in the world. If only because crooks, burglars, thieves, drug dealers and aggressive assholes are of all times, they have been and will continue to be lurking until the end of time. Or we occasionally insist on annoying other people, and vice versa. They then go to court, which they do sooner and easier here than in most other countries, and society is set up for it: 30,000 judges in fifty states, a million and a half lawyers, and 1,800 federal judges as well. But what few people realize is that a whopping 95 percent of those quarrels are settled out of court before the judge or jury is asked for a verdict. Because staying pissed gets you only so far.
But there’s nothing new under the sun here. Americans are no angrier with each other than they were ten years ago, or thirty years, or fifty. On the contrary. Rather, their combined moods are a lot better. And it shows. At the stand-up comedy theater, at the concert, at the stadium, at the movie theater, at the bar, at the restaurant. And inside people’s homes. More than half of young Americans between the ages of 18-29 today still live in a parent’s home, or often: live again in the parental home, back from having been away. Covid in particular was a reason for this, but even now that all that is in the rearview mirror the picture has remained unchanged. Because it’s often fun at home, with more entertainment on TV or the laptop than ever before. Fun. Joy. America is smiling from coast to coast.
Photo: Standup comedian Bert Kreischer on Netflix.
* Willem Meiners is the Editor of De Daily Dutchman.
