I don't want to tell sad stories about myself. We may not have had a lot to spend when I grew up, but my childhood was good. The public likes to hear a dramatic story. They want a star to rise, have a meltdown and then return to greatness. Very American.
We just assumed that Walter Cronkite was unbiased. In hindsight, it is clear that Walter Cronkite was biased and that he used feigned objectivity as the cudgel to change the American narrative from being a right of center one to being a left of center one.
I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.
For years, we just accepted the premise that the reporters from that J-school mentality of neutrality and objectivity were just laying out the facts. We just assumed that Walter Cronkite was unbiased. In hindsight, it is clear that Walter Cronkite was biased, and that he used feigned objectivity as the cudgel to change the American narrative from being a right of center one to being a left of center one.
Same old boring boring story America can’t stop telling itself. What is this sicko fascination? Every book and movie practically has to have a little, right? But why do you think all those runaways are on the streets tearing up their veins with junk and selling themselves so they can sleep in the gutter? What do you think the alternative was at home?
As I've written more, and as other Indian American voices have grown around me, I strive harder to find experiences that are unique yet a meaningful and resonant part of the American story.
This is one of the take-home messages for me: we just walk around with this narrative in America that everybody wants to be rich and famous. That that’s why people do what they do. And you know, all through these pages you learn over and over again no, actually not even NFL cheerleaders are doing it for fame and fortune. There’s another motivation going on that is so pure and human. That to me was an eye-opener in a really wonderful way.
The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored.
