Just wanted to share a cute little story with you. Last night I was out and a bouncer at one of the pubs I frequent was puzzling over the New York drivers’ license I gave as ID. He’s taken it many times before, but this time he couldn’t make sense of it and passed it to the other bouncer, an older man with a Caribbean accent.
“Oh, what part of New York are you from?”
“Staten Island. Nothing very exciting I’m afraid!”
“Is that where Clinton is from?”
“No, she’s from further north. Staten Island is a part of New York City.” (It pained me unbelievably to say that Clinton was from New York at all, but I wasn’t about to start calling her a usurper to the bouncer!)
“Aah.”
“Why, are you a Hilary Clinton fan?”
“No! Obama!”
“Me too! That’s awesome!”
And then I high fived the bouncer and I felt really good.
It’s interesting that people who have absolutely no investment in the process whatsoever still know about our politics. I guess you could say that the US makes darn sure that its government choices affect the entire world, but I’d still wager that there are people in the US who know less about the primaries than that man, a Caribbean immigrant to the UK. While celebrating “Pancake Day” on Tuesday with some of my British friends we also had a discussion about the primaries, where they proved to be very knowledgeable about parties, the nominating process, delegates and the candidates. When you contrast that to my complete lack of knowledge of how the heck Gordon Brown ended up as the PM… well I don’t know if it’s the education systems, the fact that the BBC–the ‘mainstream media’–actually understands that there are countries besides the one they are based in…I just don’t know.
But basically, that’s the gist of it. I’m really impressed. I wish Americans would show the same savvy.
