In homage to Terry Southern.
Recently I was sent a fascinating document—a kind of raw folk manifesto, you might say—that bubbled up from a slice of America’s populace that the mainstream media both sadly under-reports and criminally under-serves.
It came inside a plain manila envelope from the home of a certain “Mister Guy Grand,” and bore a curious return address: “Main Street, Anytown, USA.” I’d never heard of this “Mister Grand”—if, indeed, that is his real name—and I almost chucked it forthwith into the waste-bin. And yet the envelope gave off an odd, evocative musk, which propelled me for a moment back to my childhood—a Proustian aroma, part bubble gum and part beef jerky—and so I felt compelled to open it.
I’m so glad I did. Because, in this most contentious of political seasons, it contained a voice that demands to be heard.
I include it here in its pristine state, because—like Mississippi blues, and Yiddish vaudeville shtick—this voice must be heard in its pure form to achieve its full effect, which I find strangely poetic—even, dare I say, beautiful. It is a searing cri du coeur, a shriek from the American heartland, which asks—simply, poignantly, and with a kind of heartbreaking innocence—“Who Says U.S. Americans Our More Dumber “Than” Other Poeple?”
WHO SAYS U.S . AMERICANS OUR MORE DUMBER “THAN” OTHER P0EPLE?
I for one “am” sick and tried of it!
If you whom always say were so dumbe all the “time” were, so smart,
Donald Trump is so richer then you!
We our sick of Paul Ryan acting holer-than-you!
We our “so” sick of, the Democrap Party to!
Now Trump!
Trump had good ideas too “begin” with, BUT then the (rimes-with-**YOU-KNOW-WHOSE**) took over his campain when His hot “daughter” got merry to a ($$$$$)….
(Lets face tho, Trumps 2 boy’s our still ulgy tho! Donald is a OLD-FASHION like me, he does not “waist” good $ on fake noses for mails.)
The French people our not more, smart as us, they did not “even” copyrite THEIR fries, and NOW anyone can make them FOR free!
The Italians make statutes worth $100000000s of dolars and then leave them outside too get Dirty!! Four over 300 years!!!!!
Do NOT get me, “started” on The Belgians. So-called!!!
The blacks lived over their in Africa for 100s of years—BUT THEY DID NOTE “EVEN” BECOME “AFRICAN-AMERICANS UNTIL THEY MOVED OVER HERE!
“What” were they waiting for, all those years?
BUT now my Dad is incorrect just to call them A Jungle-Bunny?
And everyon “GETS” bend out of Shape if Trump imatate a Spaz?
In shrot we are FED! up!
AnD, if we our so dumbe, Why our “we” Everywear now? ??
Indeed.
Written in that unique American voice once described as “authentic frontier gibberish” (see Brooks, Pryor, Bergman, et al: “Blazing Saddles”), this manifesto is perhaps more salient than even Fox News when it comes to capturing a certain zeitgeist du jour. Once heard, I dare say, this cry can never be un-heard. So I thank the mysterious Mister Grand—whomever he might really be, lurking back there in the shadows of his “Anytown”—for sending this vital document along to me. And I know that its burning climactic question—“Why our “we” Everywear now???—will echo inside my head every day as we proceed to the 2020 election, and beyond.