American Culture

While sitting in a darkened movie theater here the other night watching the stars of Thelma and Louise going on their sadistic rampage through the American Southwest, I thought to myself, "What must the Swedes think of Americans? Are they able to place this pageant of violence in some larger context? Do they understand that the United States is not some continuously unfolding series of outrages, rapes, shootings, and car chases?" The answer to that question is that, among the most impressionable people in this very sophisticated country, that is precisely what they think.

Images of an America The level of ignorance about . . . the rest of the world among Americans can only be matched by the influence that American culture - news, music, movies, dress and capitalist economy - has had on the rest of the world. James Macharia East African (Nairobi, Kenya), June 8-14, 1998 America is a soap bubble that has to be burst. Dari Milev Dragan Bulgarian avant-garde artist

Well, we have all just finished celebrating Black History Month. We've all ventured out of our little worlds one or two times in the past month to experience "black" art or "black" culture or learn about "black" history. I guess we all feel that we've done our share to recognize the "blacks" in our society. Now we can all go back to our little worlds and not have to think about anything that's "black" for another 11 months. To me, Black History Month is a joke. The fact that we have to set aside a special month to celebrate the history and the accomplishments and the contributions of people of African descent speaks horribly of our society.

Racial bigotry in Philadelphia seems to be getting worse, instead of better, and is causing a lot of people to leave the city in search of more peaceful places to live. I speak of the racial slurs I endure for being white where I am a minority. I live in the Olney section, and while words disparaging to blacks and minorities are not used, I hear hurtful words like "cracker," "whitey" and "white America. " I get dirty looks from neighbors. Kids in the neighborhood believe I am rich because my skin is lighter than theirs.

RE JENICE ARMSTRONG'S Dec. 21 column: Jenice, Kwanzaa is not a true holiday! It was made up by a lady from California who had strong desires to have a black celebration of some kind in this country. Kwanzaa is a nice idea for those who share its creator's feelings, but it is not truly part of the black American culture. Most black people know nothing about Swahili! Even though we have those who talk about slavery and how it stripped black Americans of their roots, we should not attempt to falsify ourselves into being what we are not. We are black Americans, and we have contributed to the American culture, in spite of the negatives of racism and slavery.

WASHINGTON - David Letterman's "stupid human tricks" and Top 10 lists are being vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim as the late-night comedian receives this year's Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin and three other artists. Stars from New York, Hollywood, and the music world gathered Sunday in Washington to salute the comedian and the band, along with Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy, and ballerina Natalia Makarova. The honors are the nation's highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts.

On Sunday, I, like millions of other football fans in the nation, went to a friend's house and enjoyed what has become a ritual of American culture: a Super Bowl party. Like many other hosts nationwide, my friends served a variety of good food. The menu included some ethnic cuisines, in this case Cajun gumbo over red beans and rice, as well as classic American hot dogs and spicy chicken wings. At our friend's house, there was a television tuned to the game in virtually every room.

If it is true, as it almost surely is, that behind every great man is an even greater woman, then it is probably also true that behind every great rock-and-roll act is a great manager. And in this sense, there was never a greater partnership than that between Elvis Presley and Col. Tom Parker. Both Elvis and the Colonel had roots stretching deep into the heart of American culture. Elvis, of course, was the only king this nation has ever had. As American as it comes - as American as the peanut butter and banana sandwiches he loved so well.

Philip Lapsansky, sweep of white hair curling over his brow, settles into his lair, a small, paper-stuffed, book-strewn, binder-choked office on the second floor of the Library Company of Philadelphia overlooking Locust Street. Lapsansky has toiled here for more than four decades, usually clad in sedately gaudy plaid shirts and art deco-esque ties (on this day the shirt is a navy blue, black, gold, winey red-striped number with "matching" serpentine-patterned red, white and black checked cravat)

The encyclopedist's lot is not an easy one. That's what Temple University professor Miles Orvell discovered when he signed on as senior editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies. His task? To compress all of American culture, everything we've invented, done, been, thought - Coney Island and the Constitution, malls and Malcolm X, the atomic bomb and Andy Warhol - into just four volumes. "When we first started to think of this, we were quite daunted," said Orvell, 58, a man given to understatement.

WASHINGTON - David Letterman's "stupid human tricks" and Top 10 lists are being vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim as the late-night comedian receives this year's Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin and three other artists. Stars from New York, Hollywood, and the music world gathered Sunday in Washington to salute the comedian and the band, along with Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy, and ballerina Natalia Makarova. The honors are the nation's highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts.

True Believers A Novel By Kurt Andersen Random House. 438 pp. $27   The aphorism by Karl Marx that most appeals to Karen Hollander, the protagonist of True Believers , asserts that epochal events happen twice, first as tragedy and the second time as farce. It occurs to her, however, that in the 1960s, when she and her comrades were young, "playing secret agents with licenses to kill and then playing antiwar radicals, exactly the reverse happened. " A divorcée and a diabetic, with a granddaughter on whom she dotes, a brilliant attorney and dean of a prestigious law school, Hollander has recently refused to be considered for an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It should have been enough that Brian Dwyer, a 28-year-old Philadelphia film student and drummer, was last year named the Guinness World Records holder of "the world's largest collection of pizza-related items. " Yet obsession is a powerful thing. Dwyer's passion for all things pizza is so keen that he was able to persuade at least three other partners to create Pizza Brain — part pizza museum, part pizza restaurant — by purchasing and renovating two 19th-century buildings along Frankford Avenue's battered-but-burgeoning commercial corridor.

Philip Lapsansky, sweep of white hair curling over his brow, settles into his lair, a small, paper-stuffed, book-strewn, binder-choked office on the second floor of the Library Company of Philadelphia overlooking Locust Street. Lapsansky has toiled here for more than four decades, usually clad in sedately gaudy plaid shirts and art deco-esque ties (on this day the shirt is a navy blue, black, gold, winey red-striped number with "matching" serpentine-patterned red, white and black checked cravat)

For people who work to stop the sexual abuse of children, the horror of the allegations at Pennsylvania State University has offered something unexpected: opportunity. The continuing national and international news coverage is fostering discussion of a disturbing, discomfiting topic that's often ignored, experts and advocates say. "The window is open right now to have these conversations," said Pastor Aaron Anderson, a board member of Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania, based in Media.

RE JENICE ARMSTRONG'S Dec. 21 column: Jenice, Kwanzaa is not a true holiday! It was made up by a lady from California who had strong desires to have a black celebration of some kind in this country. Kwanzaa is a nice idea for those who share its creator's feelings, but it is not truly part of the black American culture. Most black people know nothing about Swahili! Even though we have those who talk about slavery and how it stripped black Americans of their roots, we should not attempt to falsify ourselves into being what we are not. We are black Americans, and we have contributed to the American culture, in spite of the negatives of racism and slavery.

It was 1949, and the custodian at the Indiana Avenue School was 65 and nearing retirement. He had been heavily involved in youth sports and was the first commissioner of the Atlantic City Little League. Yet, John Henry "Pop" Lloyd had had a completely different career before coming to the school. No less a hero than Babe Ruth had said of Lloyd that he may have been the greatest baseball player ever. Lloyd, though, had played in the Negro Leagues, the racially segregated professional baseball leagues for black players before they were allowed to play Major League Baseball.

In remarks both rousing and cutting, a top NAACP official yesterday evening castigated the Bush administration, saying the Republican Party "appealed to the dark underside of American culture" and relied on "the politics of racial division to win elections and gain power. " Speaking to about 8,000 delegates gathered for the organization's 95th annual convention, themed "The Race Is On!", NAACP chairman Julian Bond called on the African American community to launch massive voter-registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.

The princess' hair was blond in the fairy tales that Kathryn Gaffney-Golden's grandmother read to her in the 1940s. Cinderella was blond. Rapunzel was blond. Gaffney-Golden was not blond. And neither were the Cinderella and Rapunzel in the illustrated classics she bought yesterday for her 3-year-old granddaughter at the 12th Annual African American Children's Book Fair at Community College of Philadelphia. "I think it's important for her as an African American to be able to identify with the characters," said Gaffney-Golden, 62, of Mount Airy.

So this is it. This is the level of American culture we're happy to call our own and broadcast to the world. Reality shows, exhibition wrestling, news shows that unabashedly report as news the productions of their corporate parents, and a level of public scrutiny that, quite often, applies one yardstick of success: What were the ratings? TV culture isn't monolithic, of course. But, in pursuit of capturing a fractured viewership, the big networks are serving up ever-cruder grades of trash (The Bachelorette, Are You Hot?