When I was a kid I got a coonskin hat for Christmas. That's because I thought Davy Crockett was the greatest. Another Christmas I got a pair of cap gun pistols and a cowboy hat. That's because I thought The Lone Ranger was the greatest. But I never got a red cap for Christmas, even though I thought Superman was the greatest. The best I could do was sneak a big red towel of my mom's, get a safety pin and clasp the towel around my neck. Then I'd go outside, climb a tree and jump to the ground..I mean fly to the ground.
Which brings me to Mr. O'Rourke's article. Like I said yesterday, he really dumps on us baby boomers for screwing up this country and making the mess we're in today. And one of his dumps has to do with Superman. He doesn't say that we baby boomers killed Superman but he does say we've created an America in which Superman would be dysfunctional, and no where near the greatest. Here's what he says...
The United States has set itself on a course of willful self-diminishment. Seventy-four years ago the perfect American was Superman, who happened to have been, like many of our forefathers, an undocumented alien. If Superman arrived today—assuming he could get past the INS and Homeland Security—he would be faster than the postal service, more powerful than a New York Times blogger, and able to ascend tall buildings in a single elevator.
But they wouldn’t be the tallest buildings, at least not if Superman stuck around Gotham. Nine out of ten of the tallest buildings in the world are now in Asia or the Middle East. Tallest is Burj Khalifa in Dubai. At 2,723 feet, it’s nearly twice as high as Chicago’s Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower. The last time America built the tallest building was when people were still ordering things by mail from the Sears catalog in 1974.
Stick around. I may turn Mr. O'Rourke's article into a mini-series.
Inspired by "World Affairs"
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