What Has America Ever Done For Us?
Bloody Americans, eh? Coming over here, taking our culture. On this day 239 years ago a bunch of ‘em got together and decided they’d be better off without us; and yet they won’t leave us alone! We tend not to celebrate days when the colonies got uppity, so 4 July should pass by unnoticed here. How long before it becomes a British national holiday, though – and Thanksgiving as well? We’ve already absorbed Trick or Treat, baby-showers, and even the bloody high-school prom (and can someone tell me how the hell that happened?), so the right thing to do today should be to continue in the manner I’ve already established in this paragraph.
But I’m not. Instead, I have decided to list what I personally think the fifty best things to have travelled to us from across the pond (in no particular order). And as we reside in the age of hi-tech interaction, I shall invite you to contribute. But in the true hands-across-the-ocean Special Relationship spirit, just this once we’ll overlook the crap, okay? No junk food, mullets, Miley Cyrus, Dubya, Glee, High School Musical, Kanye & Kim, rednecks, Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton and power ballads.
![benjamin-franklin[1]](https://annaraccoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/benjamin-franklin1.jpg)
1) TS Eliot 2) Henry James 3) Jazz 4) The Golden Age of Hollywood 5) Kellogg’s Cereals 6) JFK 7) FDR 8) Frank Sinatra 9) Elvis Presley 10) Marvel Comics 11) DC Comics 12) Motown 13) Madonna 14) Arthur Miller 15) Andy Warhol 16) Woody Allen 17) Walt Disney 18) Bob Dylan 19) Hanna Barbera 20) Larry David 21) HBO 22) Gore Vidal 23) Sylvia Plath 24) Pixar 25) The Beats 26) The Beach Boys 27) Rock ‘n’ Roll 28) Marlon Brando 29) Cole Porter 30) Woodward & Bernstein 31) Benjamin Franklin 32) Martin Luther King 33) Abraham Lincoln 34) The Doors 35) Muhammad Ali 36) Dorothy Parker 37) ‘Peanuts’ 38) Tennessee Williams 39) Hip Hop 40) Orson Welles 41) Neil Armstrong 42) Jimi Hendrix 43) Raymond Chandler 44) Billie Jean King 45) ‘The Twilight Zone’ 46) Mark Twain 47) Lenny Bruce 48) Nirvana 49) Tom & Jerry 50) Bill Hicks
And the rest is up to you, so have a nice day…
Petunia Winegum
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July 4, 2015 at 9:16 am -
Willie Nile, Rufus Wainwright, Prince, Fringe, Lost, Person Of Interest.
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July 4, 2015 at 9:19 am -
It is a moot point as to what is American as opposed to simply the flowering of the free native from old Britain, Europe, Russia, China and especially Germany.
“German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock. Yet despite their numbers, they are barely visible.
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-barely-notice-itWhere would the ham be, without the burghers.
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July 4, 2015 at 9:56 am -
Where would the ham be, without the burghers
With Shem and Japheth ? (a little theological joke to start the weekend , there)
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July 4, 2015 at 10:16 am
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July 4, 2015 at 9:20 am -
You got Jazz, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Motown, how could you omit the Blues?
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July 4, 2015 at 10:00 am -
So many already mentioned by you lot could/should have been in there; but limiting it to fifty was far harder than you could possibly imagine.
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July 4, 2015 at 11:16 am -
You could have left out Hip Hop and Motown and replaced them with the Blues and 7 litre V8s.
And you could have left out…
…but this is turning it into MY list, not YOUR list.
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July 4, 2015 at 10:01 am -
Not to forget Cajun and Zydeco, mon Ami. (The Dwarf can often be heard tapping his foot to Big Gator’s ‘June Swamp Sounds-infact , wicked tongues do say that that is the real reason The Dwarf drives automatics-as so he can foot tap along on that piece of plastic by his left foot whilst driving , Et toi)
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July 4, 2015 at 9:36 am -
Stonewall (Pride)
The Simpsons
Alice Cooper
Isaac Asimov
Carpenters
Google
Jonathan Franzen
The National
Neal Stephenson
Dale Chihuly
David LaChapelle
Kurt Vonnegut
John Irving
Star Trek
Frankie Knuckles
Disco-
July 4, 2015 at 9:50 am -
Windy, no W.Gibson in your list?
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July 4, 2015 at 9:57 am -
Forgot him (but he’s part Canadian and if we’re including Candians, then Bruce LaBruce)
and also
Robert Heinlein
Warner Bros Cartoons
Bette Davis
Doris Day
Talking Heads
Patti Smith
Babylon 5
but we can share Christopher Nolan-
July 4, 2015 at 10:03 am -
Also forget the younger Cusacks and the Gyllenhalls
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July 4, 2015 at 9:42 am -
A couple of phrases imported from that former colony always appeal, for which no similarly succinct equivalent existed here:
‘Shit happens’
‘Wake up and smell the coffee’-
July 4, 2015 at 9:51 am -
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!”
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July 4, 2015 at 10:01 am -
That’s not a reference to the Rev. Jim Jones, is it?
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July 4, 2015 at 10:07 am -
“Sho’ is at that, boy”. – Reverend “Give til it hurts” Billy Bob Joe Jones of Four Square TV Church of God The Amazing
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July 4, 2015 at 10:01 am -
Or eat the yellow snow!
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July 4, 2015 at 10:09 am -
“Mennonite Porn” (yep, there really are websites…)
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July 4, 2015 at 9:43 am -
Andrew Carnegie
Henry Ford
J.P. Morgan
John D. Rockefeller
Cornelius VanderbiltUncle Tom Cobley and all…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) -
July 4, 2015 at 9:48 am -
Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, John Carpenter…. So they have given me a sizable chunk of my DVD collection if nothing else!
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July 4, 2015 at 9:49 am -
No junk food
Wot no Mickey Ds?! Sorry Pet , but I could quite happily go back to a time before the internet, when cellphones required a subscription to Charles Atlas , but a time when ‘burger’ meant ‘Wimpy’ or when Little Chef’s ‘take’ on ‘American Pancakes’ was a block of ice cream on top of an english one with a cross of chocolate sauce…? No and thrice NO! Yeah, I’ll admit it, things do go better with a coke (coke-it’s what makes Whisky WORK!).
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July 4, 2015 at 9:49 am -
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July 4, 2015 at 9:50 am -
Eventually.
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July 4, 2015 at 9:56 am -
Have to allow for the Irish influence.
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July 4, 2015 at 9:58 am -
..and possibly your aforementioned German one?
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July 4, 2015 at 10:00 am -
Same as the Irish I guess, they ended up in America because they couldn’t stand the folks who were running the place from which they had come…
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July 4, 2015 at 10:06 am -
A Jonathan Franzen (in my list) quote: “..because it wasn’t the people with sociable genes who fled the crowded Old World for the new continent; it was the people who didn’t get along well with others.”
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July 4, 2015 at 10:15 am -
A large chunk of the Germanic/Mittel Europe tribes were of course of the Jewish Tendency, so it was get out while you can too.
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July 4, 2015 at 11:15 am -
A similar thoughts in Australia – peopled by those who thought the country they lived in was the author of their misfortunes. Known there as ‘whinging Poms’….
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July 4, 2015 at 2:24 pm -
I always thought that was aimed at us, back here in our green Jerusalem.
I learn so much here very day.
Another gin & tonic with ice Missus?
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July 4, 2015 at 9:59 am -
Ask not what America has done for you.
Ask what do you have to do, for America.-
July 4, 2015 at 10:42 am -
Would I be labelled as a grubby nationalist for admiring that attitude & feeling we could do with some of it here?
Not a flag with stars on though!
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July 4, 2015 at 10:07 am -
The Bar Code was an American invention.
Not many people know that.-
July 4, 2015 at 10:13 am -
America was a Norfolk invention-even less people know that or care! (Without John Rolfe -yeah him what wedded Pocahontas-there would be no America, at least not as we know it, Captain).
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July 4, 2015 at 10:18 am -
Norfolk was invented by the Dutch wasn’t it?
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July 4, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
Norfolk wasn’t ‘invented’, it was created!…..partly, it is true, by the Dutch draining the swamps but mainly by God, who having created both Heaven and Earth and all the stars of the Firmament , found he had something icky left in the bottom of the test tube….Yep, you heard it here first folks; Norfolk is that stain in the divine petri dish that survived the dishwasher. All those Evolutionary DeadEnds, Missing links between animals and ‘oOOmans (as they do say round here).
Linking back into Today’s topic, sorta, the first settlers in America were from Norfolk and back then it really was 12000 acres of Malaria marsh. Those shambling, Marshzombie, Settlers (Malaria is also the reason Norfolkers are traditionally ‘slow’ and lethargic) took the mosquito with them and that probably ‘did’ for more Injuns than all the plague blankets and musket balls.
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July 4, 2015 at 2:22 pm -
God, who having created both Heaven and Earth and all the stars of the Firmament , found he had something icky left in the bottom of the test tube …. whilst Bavaria was of course the piece of God’s Earth he had been saving for himself until the meek and hard-working bavarian asked where was HE going to live?… God could hardly refuse, and so the meeks inherited the bestest earth…
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July 4, 2015 at 3:49 pm -
Bavaria was of course the piece of God’s Earth he had been saving for himself
Actually, Mary Mother Of God, had had first dibs on it -something about men in Leather shorts I believe. She then gave it to the tribe of the Bavarii, which is why she, Our Lady, is referred to as Patrona Bavariae. There is even a song about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdbPdGqjZGM (WARNING: Contains graphic scenes of thigh slapping and bavarian cowboy whooping)
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July 4, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Mark Steyn
Pete Seeger
Woody Guthrie
All its Nobel Prize winners
Ronald Reagan
Robert Heinlein (again) -
July 4, 2015 at 10:14 am -
James Whistler
Joseph Pennell
John Singer Sargent
E Mcknight KaufferMurray Perahia
Andre Previn
Roy Fox
Sylvester Ahola -
July 4, 2015 at 10:17 am -
Frank Winfield Woolworth
http://www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk/aboutwoolies.html -
July 4, 2015 at 10:30 am -
Can’t believe no one has mentioned Chuck Norris, surely the greatest actor since forever.
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July 4, 2015 at 10:37 am -
Plenty of music stuff from Irving Berlin to Hoagy C. to Laurel Canyon.
Having spent a few months working in LA nearly 40 years ago I think most strongly of the ‘can do’ attitude & ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.
The ‘can do’ being an attitude of yes, we can make this work, without the obsessive looking for reasons why we can’t that has sometimes characterised Britain. And do it straight away, too.
‘If it ain’t broke..’, we’d set up a site office in three days complete with working phones (conference too) & aircon, and each desk had an electric pencil sharpener. My expensive clutch pencil with fancy leads was admired, but with bemusement – why have one?The biggest thing though ought to be (as Moor L.) the saving of an ungrateful Europe from itself WW1, WW2, & postwar reconstruction.
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July 4, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
Much of the impetus for the Common Market/EU came from America, who were determined that the French and the Germans wouldn’t do it all a third time.
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July 4, 2015 at 12:25 pm -
They still are at it aren’t they? Just using different weapons (for now).
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July 4, 2015 at 11:00 am -
July 4, 2015 at 11:08 am -
July 4, 2015 at 11:15 am -
I would agree with most of your list but I would have left out Madonna and Walt Disney and included George Carlin and Television (the group not the invention).
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July 4, 2015 at 11:22 am -
Nobody’s mentioned the internet yet.
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July 4, 2015 at 11:51 am -
July 4, 2015 at 12:53 pm -
Yeah but most people probably don’t know the difference between ‘the internet’-an American invention and the World Wide Web which is a Brit one. The terms ‘net’ and ‘web’ have become synonymous.
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July 4, 2015 at 2:25 pm -
Let’s not get started on “the computer” or we”ll be babbling about Babbages and Queens.
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July 4, 2015 at 12:10 pm -
Ok, l know this is supposed to be about cultural influence but surely american technology has had more influence than music, hollywood and burgers? Powered flight, electric light and the telephone spring to mind as does the miniaturisation of electronics, dynamite and atomic weapons all of which have changed the world and its cultures in quite dramatic ways.
My favourite though is the ‘universal repair system’:-
If it moves and shouldn’t – use duck (or duct) tape, this includes things like blood, bones and water (if you’re in a canoe or tent etc.).
If it doesn’t move and should – use WD40
For anything else a hammer, screwdriver and/or mole grip will generally provide an answer (borrowed from English impact technology).-
July 4, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
Happy to include technology. As I said, mine is purely personal and limited to fifty, so all additions encouraged.
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July 4, 2015 at 1:33 pm -
OK then. Frank Norton. (No, he didn’t invent the motor-bike.)
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July 4, 2015 at 3:45 pm -
If it moves … etc.
That reminds me of advice to young recruits:
If it moves salute it, if it doesn’t move paint it white.
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July 4, 2015 at 12:22 pm -
I nominated the addition of Wallace Simpson to the list as it allowed us to get rid of the execrable Edward VIII and replace him with the timid, gut honourable George VI.
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July 4, 2015 at 1:22 pm -
Jeans.
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July 4, 2015 at 1:27 pm -
No that’s French. Denim – serge de Nimes.
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July 4, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
It was a German -Levi Strauss- who first made ‘jeans’ as we know them…in America so Engineer is right I think.
Exkurs. In the former DDR , jeans were known by their funky, snappy, Soviet-German name of ‘Rivet Trousers’…
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July 4, 2015 at 2:18 pm -
Must gave been a big relief from arse-slapping leather….
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July 4, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
Cindy Crawford. She’s definitely not French.
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July 4, 2015 at 1:33 pm -
The Good:
Music:
Aaron Copland
Philip Glass
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street BandTech:
GoogleThe Bad:
Modern teenagers -
July 4, 2015 at 1:34 pm -
On behalf of the wrinklies:
Lady Randolph Churchill
Albert Einstein
Bing Crosby
Ella Fitzgerald
Glenn Miller
Benny Goodman-
July 4, 2015 at 2:26 pm -
Albert Einstein? Shome mistake shurely…
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July 4, 2015 at 3:35 pm -
No, America ‘gave’ the world Albert Einstein (think he even became a US citizen?)….but of course he was a German.
Not a lot of people know this but, before going to the US, AE hid out from the SS Snatch Squads on a heath behind ‘my’ little Norfolk Village School. Well, that’s what the Blue Plague says…personally I think he was studying the villagers and first formulating his theories on time travel…Back To The Fomorian so to speak.
https://eastofelveden.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/u237135acme1.jpg
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July 4, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
July 4, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
Sorry, I know it’s the fault of imprisoned Ed, but your mention of ‘the Blue Plague’ does make me think that there was a different strain of the Black Death particular to Norfolk!
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July 4, 2015 at 4:13 pm -
No it was intentionally mispelt! Go round any town these days and you’ll see the ‘Blue Plague’ . If people can’t be bothered to use the internet and research before going somewhere then they jolly well deserve not to know that “not far from this spot, 1667 Samuel Pepys urinated ..”
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July 4, 2015 at 1:34 pm -
July 4, 2015 at 3:15 pm -
Rin Tin Tin (but with German origins) and the alternate Black American soul music that became Northern Soul
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July 4, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
Thomas Paine……..a Norfolk boy, who talked much sense and was a major influence in the revolutionary war. Author of “Common Sense” which was influential in its time, totally ignored today of course.
Ronald Reagan……perhaps the greatest freedom fighter, for freeing the Russian people and its satellite countries from communism, though of course he did not achieve that alone.
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