The First Few Centuries Are the Hardest
HAVE you been to Europe lately? Well, I have, after twenty years between trips. Europe hasn't changed much but we sure have!
The average American today does spend a percentage of his time viewing Westminster, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and/or St. Paul's. The rest of the time goes to playing "Let's avoid the American tourists!"
Things were certainly different back in the '20s. Remember how we'd hang around the American Express or Piccadilly or St. Mark's Square, eyes right for the gray fedora, ears cocked for the familiar accent that proclaimed the Amur-icain? Then followed the big hello, the "where you from?", the "Do you know?", the drink together at Harry's Bar, and the eternal search for ham 'n eggs? But now our fellow citizens adjust their babushkas, pull up their Daks, and parse avoir out loud, just to throw their fellow nationals off the scent. A day without speaking to an American abroad is a big day. This is seldom, if ever, achieved but it is possible. To achieve it, of course, one must avoid the American Express, the Georges V, the Danielli, and "that little French bistro" on the waterfront. Why this change? Why this feeling of shame for Americans or things Americans?
Consider politics, probably the most American and most democratic of institutions. After all, our forefathers gave up a relatively comfortable existence in Europe to break ground, eke out a bare livelihood, and jeopardize a scalp, in a land that knew not kings or duchesses, and that elected its representatives from "the people."
And, what happens? Politics becomes a dirty word. A politician is someone you wouldn't want your sister to marry. Going into politics, except for the top jobs, like President or Governor, is tantamount to giving up the Ten Commandments and forsaking the companionship of honest folk. I'm not at all sure a royalist ticket wouldn't score big next election!
Why this switch between, say, the days of Lincoln and of Eisenhower?
I'll never forget that trip downtown a year or so ago, with an extra-voluble taxi driver. He spent the first part of the drive recounting the tale of a nit-wit college professor - and the last half expatiating on how his son was going to college, an opportunity he himself had never had.
This is not atypical; this is America's pattern of educational schizophrenia. The professor is lampooned in scores of jokes, dozens of cartoons. He is mildly scorned for the little he earns. The business tycoon would hoot, were you to suggest his son study for the teaching profession. And yet, probably no nation is as ready as this one for self-sacrifice, hours of drudgery, years of abnegation, in order to provide education for the offspring. In one breath, America treats the teacher as a colossal joke; in the next, little Willy must get to sit at his feet!
I touched on titles - the thing we threw off 200 years or more ago. It is even contrary to the Constitution to bestow, or receive, titles in this land of the free. We rather mildly ridicule our British friends for their devotion to the Queen, and the pomp and circumstance of royalty. Ben Franklin was proud of his unadorned shoe buckles, and plainer Mr. Today, let a Sir or a Lady enter a room, and our gentry roll over and play dead. Let even a minor Countess accept a party invitation, and no invitee sends regrets. Let an American deb wed a titled dub, and she's in. Let the Windsors enter a restaurant for dinner, and the head waiter, the reservations lists, yes - even the check - go up the flue in a welter of bowing, scraping and attendant malarkey.
It is, I'm afraid, an accepted mark of puerility, to fantasy. That's our trouble - youth! We're so very, very young a nation. And as with the young, we say one thing and do another - and get quite angry when our anachronisms are pointed out.
I'll never forget my first night on foreign soil. It was spent in an inn built 100 years before we became a nation!
That really gave me pause. I began to understand just a little better why we pass Prohibition laws, and go on the biggest bender ever; why we make moral turpitude the only grounds for divorce in a number of states, and rig up the assignation with paid performers and cameras waiting; why we are for "dry" drinks and like sweet ones (the French, no fools, label our champagnes "brut" when they're really demi-sec!).
We insist that all men are created equal; then organize more snooty clubs, restricted developments, exclusive resorts than class-conscious Europe ever saw. We point with pride to Lady Liberty holding her torch high to the troubled of all lands, while our other hand is putting new restrictive touches to already prejudiced immigration laws!
Yes, our people are funny, but not that funny. We are young but not that young. We must start growing up to the responsibilities that are ours - whether we like 'em or not.
To do that, two things come first — a willingness to permit an honest appraisal of the state of the nation without an accusation of subversion being leveled at the appraisers; and second, a willingness to accept individual or group differences as interesting and desirable, not queer or furrin'.
Can we do it? We better had, and we'd better start now. Childhood is fascinating but second childhood is revolting. I have a stake in this - as have you. I want to be alive a while longer!
America - arise; you have nothing to lose but your growing pains.
Mr. Misch, vice president and accountexecutive with Al Paul Lefton Co., NewYork advertising agency, is a columnistfor The Playbill, program magazine forBroadway theaters.
