Bits And Bobs, Volume I: "Webb" Of Thought; Trademarked Individuality; SNL Shows Signs Of Life; Anyone Else Notice How Yogi Berra Has Taken Over?

JUSTIN WEBB KNOWS AMERICA

Justin Webb is British, and he happens to be a BBC correspondent who lives and works in the United States. As far as I'm concerned, he's the most consistently accurate British news analyst insofar as reading accurately American culture (by which I mean temperament, sociological trends, and the like) is concerned. Millions of Britons watch his segments on the BBC evening news, and many folks also read his occasional columns in the Times (of London) and listen to him on BBC Radio (usually, but not exclusively, BBC Radio 4).

I admit that my country has a problem when it comes to understanding much of the rest of the world; American culture is still so ubiquitous that our collective sophistication regarding this international world is often a bit embarrrassing. That being said, many Britons (as well as folks from many other countries, not all of them European) often display a sort of knee-jerk anti-Americanism--if not specifically, then in sentiment--due to a similar sort of culturally-derived set of motivations. With Americans, this phenominon often manifests itself as mass ignorance of the importance of understanding other cultures, whereas with many folks from other countries, it comes across as misreadings on American culture due to knowing enough to make generalized statements (some true, many not) but not really knowing much about American culture beyond that.

I think that Justin Webb truly knows America--he knows its meta-tendencies, but more than that he understands its micro-movements and its idiosyncrasies (at almost all levels) in a manner that only an American expatriate or a foreigner committed to living on a long-term basis in the United States can truly grasp. His columns, with which I usually if not always agree, are first-rate, as is his reporting. But until recently I didn't know that he also has a more informal blog-site...though, since everyone seems to have a blog-site these days (which I consider no bad thing), I should have guessed that he had one.

Anyway, I stumbled upon his site the other day, and it quickly struck me that he viewed the Biden-Palin debate the way a lot of Americans viewed it, though the language he used to articulate his points was sometimes understandably different from what native-born Americans would use. At any rate, what follows are a few of his (again, rather informal) observations, apparently written down while the debate was in progress, and edited slightly by me in order to provide context:

--"[Palin] has [thus far] made no mistakes except that she doesn't appear to know much about anything."

--"Joe, there is such a thing as too much detail [in a national debate setting]."

--"Joe Biden is just sounding a little full of Joe Biden now. This is the danger for him."

--"What is your Achilles heel? Palin says she does not have one... oh, dear."

--"[Biden] avoided some of the big pitfalls--sexism and bloviating--and scored some big hits. [Palin] came over as slightly more amiable...than she has in the past. [But] although she can memorize things, she plainly does not know them. Does this matter?"

If you are interested in reading more of his comments about this topic (or any other about which he's blogged), the address to Mr. Webb's site is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/justinwebb

I'M GOING TO SHOW HOW SOPHISTICATED I AM BY BEING AN INDIVIDUAL THE EXACT SAME WAY EVERY ONE ELSE IS BEING AN INDIVIDUAL...

The following is a sliver of the human behaviorioral pie I've been pondering for quite some time now: it seems to me to be the case that those who feel the need to project consistently an air of "reading the cultural text against itself" are actually using their projection as a mechanism shielding the fact that they are most likely incredibly insular one-trick ponies whose interior worlds would (and do) explode if (and when) they encounter real cultural sophistication. This type of scenario tends to frighten them back into their wolf-pack-esque faux "erudite" friendship groups.

Here's a follow-up observation: it seems to me that those who actually do read the cultural text against itself on a consistent basis have no hang-ups about personal style and little or no psychological need to project a false sense of worldliness. They tend to dress how they want to dress (and not in a recognizably "rebellious" and/or "new-wave hip" and/or "retro hip" and/or "bourgeois sophisticated" manner), listen to music that has stood the critical test of time (from whichever school of music they choose), and go about their lives in a manner that does not ingratiate them to those who feel a need to project trademarked pseudo-intelligence (see the above observation for a further definition of this pseudo-intelligent group). They also tend to be as or more comfortable alone as they are in their loosely-knit friendship groups. They are not conventional, but they are also not self-consciously "unconventional"; they simply are who they are, which, in this era of trademarked-everything (including trademarked "alternative thought") is perhaps the most unconventional way to be. They are opinionated, but they do not display their opinions in a manner that can be pigeonholed into any one particular societal group by anyone willing to analyze closely what they have to say.

GETTING SCHOOLED, BIDEN STYLE...

Sometimes "Saturday Night Live" is pretty dead, at least as far as laughs are concerned, but this past weekend the show generated a lot of genuine belly laughs with its consistently spot-on reading of the Biden vs. Palin debate. If you missed it, the sketch can be found at the following address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROt3qC8TRVc

MOST BASEBALL FANS ARE YOGI BERRAS, AT LEAST FROM TIME TO TIME

The following statement, spoken as a toast by someone who I believe is actually quite intelligent, was overheard (by me) at a local watering hole moments after the Minnesota Twins completed a season-ending loss to the Chicago White Sox:

"Well, all you can do is all you can do."

I found myself thinking reflectively in similarly odd manners. Baseball just has a way of doing that to you, I guess. At any rate, one thing seems clear: Yogi Berra is still with us, but even when he passes on, he'll...uh...still be with us.

(For context, check out the "Yogi-isms" section of following web-site: http://www.yogiberra.com/)