I love America

I'm sitting up watching Fox News again, something I've done since 2002 when I've felt out of sorts. There's something very comforting and stable about the Fox News bubble-world - not because I believe any of it, but because it's so consistent, so monotone. I mostly try to catch Bill O'Reilly, but this time it's a show called "Hannity's America," in which smug, empty-headed Republican hack Sean Hannity serves up a steady stream of anodyne patriotic ramblings.

The theme of the show today - not surprisingly - is "Why America is the greatest nation on Earth," or some such. I expected ranting about McDonald's and Coca-Cola and the suckiness of Canada's health care system. And of course I got it. But what startled me into writing this post was Hannity's main, first, and primary justification for American awesomeness.

Which, according to him, was our multiethnic population.

Hannity opened his show with shots of black, Asian, and Hispanic Americans doing their stuff, and waxed lyrical about our capacity for absorbing immigrants from all over the world. Not exactly what you'd expect from the mouthpiece of a party ruled by white Southerners! That this was the first thing he talked about really struck me. And during the inevitable "American TV shows are the best" segment, the main example he showed was the Japanese-American star of "Heroes." At least half the man-in-the-street shots were of nonwhite people.

What kind of nation do I live in, where even the most die-hard conservatives love their country for embracing foreigners and minorities? An awesome one, I believe. Which is not to say we wouldn't be greater if we had fewer of the likes of Sean Hannity.

But give the man this much credit. For a few minutes, he managed to make me feel even more patriotic than I normally do.