Drop a coin into the sea and shout out "Please come back to me"

Briefly Griping about Petty Things with Linda 
Today's topic: Americans who write editorials reflecting on how American culture appears to them after living abroad

Why do these writers always seem to live in France? (Is it Henry James's fault? I'd like to blame Henry James.) Why do they think it's pithy or original to point out that most Parisians enjoy a higher quality and quantity of wine, metro service, and leisure time than we do? Or that Americans, from the international view, appear loud and overenthusiastic and industrious to a fault? Why do they act like the U.S. is totally bereft of decent cheese, as if Wisconsin and Vermont and the concept of imported goods didn't exist? Why is the go-to way to express how shocking you now find America's over-the-top consumerism to narrate the experience of visiting the grocery store cereal aisle? (or toothpaste shelf? or snack selection? Also, as Calvin's dad taught us in the '90s, it doesn't take the lens of an expat to feel menaced by choice.) Tell me more about what it's like to sit in wire chairs at an outdoor cafe sipping espresso and really connecting to the human soul across the table as the afternoon sun lengthens your twinned shadows. The point of these essays is never to suggest that American life is inferior, per se, but merely that moving to the 5ème arrondissement has magically enabled the expat writer to effortlessly summit Maslow's hierarchy of needs.*

Critiquing American society, as a pastime, is fun and necessary and should be enthusiastically embraced by anyone with working eyes and a sense of humor. Taking stock of how our neighbors are conducting themselves and noting our nation's comparative successes and failures is a form of good citizenship. All I want is for our international correspondents to start writing essays that don't rehash cross-cultural hot takes from 1831.


* Yes, of course Ta-Nehisi Coates is the exception. Not because he entirely avoids the cliches I'm complaining about, but because he always manages to find a fresh angle on them.