Bill Maher, Barack Obama and the True Story of American Exceptionalism

Over at the Huffington Post, Bill Maher is outraged that people like me are outraged at a statement made by Barack Obama a few weeks ago. When asked if he believed in American Exceptionalism, the President of the United States replied: “I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British Exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.”

Bill Maher, never one to miss an opportunity to express his contempt for anything not Bill Maher, wrote: “Yes, our so-called President wrote that people in other countries might like their countries better… I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.”

[click image to play video]

People like Maher use this kind of snark to cover the fact that either they have serious issues in comprehension, or, more likely, that they do not care for the lay of the intellectual battlefield and so want to move it to another, slimier, filthier one.

The question to the President was not whether or not he believed in American Patriotism – that is, the love of one’s country. Of course other people love their countries. But the idea of American Exceptionalism is a specific political construct, much like British Colonialism. I suppose I should have cut both of them more slack, unfamiliar as both hearts are with the feel of patriotism and faced with the clear evidence of lack of intellectual exceptionalism on both their parts.

Anyway, this has to be responded to: and never were there bigger fish in a smaller barrel. Many of the elements I used to make the case for American Exceptionalism I first used here at Big Hollywood in a piece called The Workshops of Identity. I opened those arguments up considerably, and the great thing about video [click image above to play] is the ability to include a lot of statistics and graphic elements to hammer home the point. (The list of American inventive genius in particular is a great deal of fun.)

At 15 minutes it’s a little long for the web – I know, you are shocked… Shocked! – but that’s how much data is in there. And you really can’t end a piece like this without pining for the days when a common citizen didn’t have to explain the idea of American Exceptionalism to the President of the United States, but rather the other way around. Hearing those words from a President who loved his country as much – if not more – than the rest of us certainly highlights just how far we have fallen and how much work remains for all of us to do.