I’m reading about the troubles of Boeing’s grounded 787 airliners. And I’m thinking that, somewhere, Gordon Sinclair must be bitterly disappointed in us.
Sinclair, for the non-pop-obsessives in the crowd, was the Toronto radio commentator who stuck up for the beleaguered United States in his spoken-word editorial “The Americans.”
Sinclair’s narration, set to stentorian patriotic music, became a surprise U.S. Top 40 hit early in 1974.
Detroit radio newsreader Byron MacGregor released a similar version at around the same time. Such was America’s hunger for reassurance that both records rode the U.S. Top 40 at the same time, with MacGregor’s reaching the Top 10.
(“The Americans” has resurfaced since then at times of great national distress, most notably after the 9/11 attacks. It is sometimes passed off as a new commentary, presumably by non-pop-obsessives unaware of its once inescapable radio presence.)
“The Americans” is a rambling ham-handed mess of a record — sort of a John Wayne-meets-Barry-Goldwater cocktail, with a dimly discernible aftertaste of Howard Cosell.
Over the course of four minutes and 40 seconds, Sinclair orates all over the place, ending with a wedged-in news item about the American Red Cross that totally defuses what would have been a much stronger closing statement 20 seconds earlier.
For whatever reason, the part of “The Americans” that always sticks with me is a random detour in which Sinclair champions America’s mastery of the airplane industry.
Go on, he hectors the listener (I’m paraphrasing here.) Show me an airplane the equal of a Boeing, a Lockheed, or a McDonnell-Douglas. Every commercial airline in the world except the Russians buys American planes. If anyone else can build planes as well as we do, why don’t they fly them?
It’s a factual enough boast, I suppose. But it always baffles me — maybe because it comes out of left field and is set in contradictory context.
One moment, Sinclair is mentioning the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine; the next, he’s going on about the glories of America’s jumbo jets. U.S. government policies meant to restore war-torn nations have no particular parallel with the aerospace industry, which was and is a for-profit enterprise devoted to no greater good than the bottom line.
(Put more simply: America didn’t get good at making planes because it wanted to help everybody else.)
I also can’t help but interpret it as a tacit acknowledgement that the U.S. auto industry wasn’t what it used to be.
Lots of other countries built cars, but few of them did so with the style, grace and quality of America at its best. I wonder if Sinclair’s failure to doff his cap toward Detroit was more than coincidental. (I would guess the average American in those days would have boasted about Ford Mustangs or Chevrolet Corvettes long before Boeing jumbo jets.)
Fast-forward to 2013, anyway, and now it doesn’t even seem like we build planes like we used to.
Gordon Sinclair is long dead. But it tickles me to imagine him sitting doughtily behind his mic, despairing about America’s loss of aerospatial reputation, and perhaps even throwing in the towel:
You know what? You can’t even trust American airplanes any more. I wash my hands of that country. The devil take the bunch of ‘em.
Say, how ’bout them Leafs?
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I wasn’t gonna put this in here, but just for the sheer hell of it, here’s a link to “The Americans.” The part about airplanes starts about 1:50 in, if you want to skip there.
Never heard that before now. Wow. I keep typing then erasing my response. I’ll have to think about this for a while.
I am curious as to what you think.
His view of the US as an under-appreciated force for good challenges me. I tend toward a critical or maybe cynical view of a lot of U.S. international activities. But it’s an insecure view because I am sure there is so much I don’t know. I just have a sinking feeling often when I think of what may be occurring around the world. Not to be negative, but some things I have seen domestically, citizen to citizen, have left me heartbroken. So add to that, differences in culture/nationality/religion, and it could be anything goes! I just think even apparent help is often commercially-motivated and about self-interest.
At the same time, thinking like this seriously f’s up my high. So I look for evidence of good works and try to support those. Try to raise kids with clear, strong minds of their own, empathy, love, intuition among other things. And through my work, I try to do good and provide an example, esp. for students.
Ever since attending that UN conference in S. Africa the week before 9/11 though, shit just stays real. People were soooo critical of the US and my status as a “minority” did nothing to soften the blow. They hate US and told me countless reasons why. Don’t even know how to wrap this up.
I think your view is more informed and considered than Gordon Sinclair’s was.
For instance, I question his implicit assertion that no one was allowed to criticize the Vietnam War just because we gave out so much aid.
If other countries called us “war-mongering Americans” in those days, it seems to me they would have had a pretty strong case.
(If people knew at the time what we were doing in Chile to try to overthrow the Allende government, their disgust might have been even stronger.)
And as for people calling Americans “decadent” … I dunno; drive down any suburban retail corridor highway and see if there’s not some truth to that.
I commend you for looking for sources of light; mainly I just shrug my shoulders and drink beer.
That’s something else I’ll look up (U.S. and Allende government). And, yeah, I’m fueled by heartwarming, encouraging stuff so I look for it. And without it, I’m sour company. But, on occasion a drink (or few) finds me when it gets to be too much. I try to keep that to a minimum though.
A place to start (read down from here):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile#1950s_and_1960s
Ok good. I was looking at http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/htdtisallende.html and wasn’t sure if it was a good place to start. I’ll check out your link above.
There is no way that anyone who condones this would accept the same for themselves and their country. I think that is the real test; if the shoe was on the other foot, would you accept it. That just f’s me up. If you’re poor, you just really have to look closely at those who offer help. You can easily get caught up in a trick bag, messin with these jokers. That’s just so foul.