Americans - and antiAmericans

In Melbourne today, at Southbank with 3 of my kids. We were watching a street performer (and there are some good ones there) who asked for 2 volunteers from the audience. He said he needed strong men. He pointed at one man, who agreed. He pointed to the man in front of me, who demurred (despite my pushing him forward) and then asked me. I was up for it. I left my kids (who were in the very front of the crowd) and helped the other man, Stu, to assemble a rickety tower of milkcrates. There was quite a bit of patter and some pretty good jokes. Then he said "are there any Americans here? put your hands up?". I was motioning to my son - who is in fact a US citizen - to put his hand up but he didn't, perhaps quite sensibly. (He's 8).

When he had ascertained that there were no Americans in the audience he said something like "they're all bastards". This is annoying on a number of levels. For a start, my son (and my other son, for that matter) is not a bastard. Nor is he fat, stupid, gun-crazy, a god-botherer or any of the other things that everyone accuses Americans of. I don't get it. Enlightened, progressive people who wouldn't otherwise give in to really gross national stereotyping will have no qualms in making sweeping statements about Americans.

It's annoying in another way. I assume it's done as an inclusionary thing - we (the performer, the crowd) are all drawn together by our shared anti-americanism. It's a very cheap rhetorical shot, and cowardly. I remember years ago, as an adolescent, being at a comedy show and the comic making a clumsy reference to how stupid and corrupt Joh Bjelke-Petersen was, which of course drew a laugh from the crowd, and in much the same way. We all then, safe in our shared anti-Johism, hunkered down for more 'comedy'. But even though I loathed the Kingaroy peanut I still felt the whole thing has been co-opted in a nasty and cheap way. I really don't like being told how to think - especially if I already think that way anyway.