Jerry Springer's America

This headline made the front page of a number of Australian news sources, including  The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about a teenage girl from Georgia who had elective plastic surgery to avoid ridicule from her classmates. While the article is both philosophically and morally intriguing in its own right – the ethical dilemma of using medical methods to treat societal problems – it continues to befuddle me that this is the type of news that so often gains so much attention here in Australia rather than substantive news, influencing the Australian perception of the US and its citizens.

While I believe most Australians understand that Yellow Journalism does not accurately portray everyday American life, those that don't can certainly be forgiven, given how many sensationalist or exceptional stories make it down here.  Lydia and I can't help but bemuse which headlines from our homeland appear down here so prominently.  Many of these articles appear to exaggerate or even help shape the all-too-prominent freak-show perception of typical life in America.  It's both amusing and a little unsettling sometimes what some Australians believe to be commonplace in American life and the preconceived notions of my countrymen; ideas that all Americans are packing concealed 9mm handguns, that we can sue anyone with whom we disagree, and that without a valid health insurance card, our ambulances leave you to expire on the street.  While I have little doubt that many of these exceptional news stories are true, and I won't try and refute the fact that there are a lot of off-beat, backwards, and some downright crazy people in the States (as they are plentiful), I do fear that these stories evoke a contrived or misconstrued America.  Coupled with the fact that when most Australians travel to the States, their primary destinations are LA and Vegas, arguably the most inauthentic cities in the States, I fear there may just be a systematic misrepresentation of what America and Americans are really like.

Courtesy of 27blash6

To be fair, the portrayal of Australia and its people is also largely off-base in the States; think Crocodile Dundee, Outback Steakhouse, and Fosters; I can assure you these stereotypes are (mostly) not true.  As much as I cringe when I read news stories about the Octomom, Obama’s birth certificate, and the rampant gun violence in the States (granted, that last one might not be too off-base), I’m sure an Australian would just as well do the same when he learns how little the average American knows about Australia, or when goes to order his Bloomin’ Onion and reads about the train surfers in US newspapers in the States.  And as much as Lydia and I enjoyed Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, the book most definitely sensationalizes how deadly Australia really is.

One could make the argument that Americans bring it upon themselves, particularly in how we’ve both relatively recently shifted our foreign policy to become the “World Police,” the rise of the fundamentalist religious zealots, and our insatiable appetite for television shows like Jersey Shore, The Hills, or Biggest Loser.  Who could blame Australians, or the world at large, for having such a poor impression of Americans and what kind of people we are?  Perhaps I simply have rose-coloured glasses and the majority of my countrymen really are a bunch of dim, morally depraved obese oafs.  Perhaps the US and Americans that are represented in the news and media here are a more accurate representation of what America really is than what I perceive.  But if that is the case, I think I'd rather continue in my delusion; at least then I can still maintain some faith in my home country.