by Richard Cole
March 16, 2008

When’s the last time you said you were really proud to be an American? I didn’t say: “When did you say you were a proud American?” I didn’t say: “When did you say you were proud to be an American?” When was the last time you said you were really proud?

I was thinking back to the last time I remembered saying I was “really proud to be an American,” and here is what I came up with.

I was watching the Winter Olympics in1980 as the U.S. Olympic hockey team was playing the Soviets. I don’t remember where the Olympics were — this is one of those really simple things to Google — but I do remember I was in the Bahamas watching the final game on a resort bar big television screen. I was really proud to be an American because we beat the Russians. I don’t remember much else except I felt my heart soar abnormally high at that moment.

I think I would have been really proud to be an American if I had known that an American congressman named Charley Wilson arranged to give the rocket launchers to the guerillas in Afghanistan that allowed them to knock the Russian helicopters out of their sky and eventually drive the Russians out of their country, demoralizing them and ultimately turning the tide in the cold war. But I really didn’t know enough to be really proud until I saw the movie.

I can think of lots of things that would make me really proud to be an American today. If, for example, we found a way to stop the epidemic of child abuse — rapes of infants, murders, Internet stalking, child pornography, violence on television. That would make me really proud.

If we could figure out a way to retain our world status as a “Superpower” without looking to so much of the world like a bully on the international playground. That would make me really proud. Like, for example, if we spent as much money making the Peace Corps as much the envy of the free world as we spend on the Marine Corps.

I guess if we do have to fight wars, it would make me really proud if the members of the U.S. Congress stood up and said: “We ought not to be fighting these wars with other peoples’ children, and we shouldn’t be financing them with the taxes extracted from the future earnings of our grandchildren.” If I heard our American politicians say that, that would make me really proud, I think.

I’m proud that we have a better than even chance that public opinion someday might have nearly as much influence on our politicians as special interest lobbies seem to today. But that’s kind of a theoretical pride, not quite a real pride.

I guess if I was the wife of a junior U.S. senator who, defying all odds, was winning presidential primaries he was expected to lose in the corn and Bible belts of America, I would be really proud to be an American. I think that would merit more than just being proud.

After all, America is a country that didn’t let Blacks vote, counted them as only three-fifths of a person, lynched them for looking the wrong way at white women, made them ride the back of the bus, eat in separate restaurants, drink from their own drinking fountains. We have come a long way. Anyhow, it seems to me that I can be proud of the progress my country has made in a relatively short and recent period of time.

Its against the backdrop of that kind of history that makes it reasonable for me to feel that if I were Black, and if it was my husband who was well on the way to winning the nomination to be president of these United States, I might stand up in front of a bunch of his supporters and say that for the first time I am really proud to be an American. Maybe it would have been better for Mrs. Obama to have said “really, really proud.”

I’m proud, by the way, that my favorite candidate, Hillary Clinton, didn’t try to exploit this rather innocent statement, and add to what right-wing radio did by suggesting that the man who would be president is married to some kind of traitor because she said her husband’s success made her proud to be an American in a way she had never felt before.

And I’m even more inclined to be really proud to be an American because of the comment Republican candidate John McCain made a few weeks earlier when he told Time Magazine that no matter what anyone may say to the contrary, he knows Senators Clinton and Edwards and Obama to be great American patriots.

Richard Cole is professor and chairperson of the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing at Michigan State University.