The wife is teaching a human geography class this semester and during the first class students were bashing the lack of cosmopolitanism among Americans. (Never mind that most the students had likely never left the state they were born in, let alone the country). I had the wife assign the students to read this excellent Screed (TM) by James Lileks.

A bit of set-up is in order. It seems The Guardian sent a reporter from Birmingham (UK) to Birmingham (AL) to write about the differences between the two and the reporter basically ends up taking a bunch of cheap swipes at the U.S. Lileks basically takes the guy behind the wood shed.

One example:

The Guardian:

The Olive Garden Italian restaurant looks a little more promising than the dozens of other eating places along the strip mall just off Interstate 20 in Birmingham, Alabama. The discreet hint of Tuscan decor and the passable wine list disguise the fact that there are 476 other Olive Gardens across North America, all with precisely the same menu.

Lileks:

That’s right. It’s called “standardization,” and it makes it logistically possible to run chains that span three thousand miles and simultaneously depend on local suppliers and national ad campaigns. It has its emotional cost, as the European keenly notes. Diners in Maine often put down their Olive Garden menus, stare into the middle distance, haunted by the suspicion that the exact same alignment of foodstuffs is also offered in San Diego. They shake it off and get back to ordering, but the feeling that their veal’s seasoning has been predetermined in a far-off corporate office gives the meal a false and hollow taste. On the other hand, screw it; you get as many breadsticks as you want. The hot soft kind, too. I mean, if you ask for ten, you get ten. What a country.

ATSRTWT.