Those who fear Brand America might be broken need to visit New York, preferably with a child
One little word suddenly starts you thinking. Here, down an anonymous road in a small American town, is another street filled with those prefab homes you can cart on the back of a lorry or sometimes pull behind a truck. It's pleasant enough in a downbeat way. Flowers in front gardens, washing flapping from lines. But the word that matters is there at the first turning. "Pinewood Adult Mobile Park", it says. Ah! Adult?
Do they mean "adult" as in porn movies? "Adult" as in "for heaven's sake grow up"? Or adult as in no dogs, no drinking on the lawn and absolutely no kids? And the probable truth, as you examine Pinewood, is that children are not welcome. It's world without glad cries of joy or pain, where no birds sing.
We've been winding down for a few days after a spell of kids-with-everything, a trip to New York with our Spanish grandchildren (12, 10 and 8) and their first encounter with US life. And the thing that you see at once is how different this world seems through childhood eyes. Oh, of course, the staples of any tourist swing come set in place: the Empire State, Liberty Island, Central Park and sundry museums. But it's the unexpected things that give you a jolt.
Standing in front Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans with a 12-year-old and trying to explain what iconic means; discovering that they're all three instantly at home because they can switch fluently between New York's first and second languages, English and Latin American Spanish; coming to terms with their snack of choice ? lurid frankfurters from street stalls ? plus injunctions to check the change. What don't they like? "American television is just such rubbish," says Leonardo gravely, worn down by too many commercial breaks within 24 hours. "And do we have to have hamburgers again?"
But as for M&M's World, in Times Square, with its two-storey wall of chocolate, 50 feet wide? "That's fantastic," says Georgina, 10, with predictable fervour ? while her sister sits in our bedroom window examining a monster poster denouncing bed bugs, next to one of Daniel Radcliffe bigger than a cricket pitch. Now ? please ? can we go to the Apple Store one more time?
Bring me your poor and huddled masses. Ellis Island passes an afternoon well enough. But the moment where eyes grow widest ? the moment that sticks in the memory most vividly ? sweeps in straight from left field. We're in a taco joint on the west side. Mum and dad having a fine dining night off. Beatrice, eight, wants the loo. Mexicans answer to bathrooms, it seems. She disappears and is back again in 20 seconds. "The toilet is all blocked up," she reports, eyes rolling. "It's disgusting."
Georgina is up and off in a trice. "It's flooding all over the floor," she confirms, eyes even wider. "It's running out under the door." Which, of course, Leonardo has to check for himself. Did they have a good time? I ask their mother the following morning. "I think they wished they'd ordered fajitas," she says, "but the broken lavatory was really the only thing they talked about." And will probably recall 20 years on.
Goodbye, said Georgina, as she got in the taxi to JFK. "Love you, guys." Thanks for the presents, said Beatrice. "They're awesome." So there they are, a candy mountain, a host of hot dogs, a flotilla of iPads, a platoon of painted tins of soup and one ruptured restroom later. Somewhere just out of sight line, in between commercial breaks, Donald Trump is probably still boring on about where Barack Obama was born. But adults, aren't they such a pain? Seven days in New York and my grandchildren talk as though they were born in Brooklyn. Is America a broken brand, ask the tremulous pundits. Not through the eyes of a child.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/08/united-states-brand-america-child
Cameron Diaz Cameron Richardson Camilla Belle Carla Campbell
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