Never The Twain Shall Meet

American culture can often get lost in translation— sometimes for the best.

- Guy Martin

FORGET OUR ROLE AS THE WORLD’S BELEAGUERED BEAT COP IN Afghanistan and Iraq; it’s the daily American fare of films, TV shows, basketball, baseball, pop music, and yes, hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbecue that influences huge swaths of this earth’s culture. Talk about soft power’s reach: The reason that there are Jeopardy! broadcast clones, starring locally generated likenesses of the crisp, suit-clad Alex Trebek in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Sweden, Germany and Estonia, among other countries, is the same reason that Beyoncé and Jay-Z—and NFL exhibition games, for that matter—will fill London’s Wembley Stadium to the rafters.

American culture rules because it’s just such ripping good fun.

An American, Art Ingels, invented the gokart. An American, Tom Blake, invented the modern-day surfboard. By no means least, an American, Walt Disney, invented Mickey Mouse. Millions of people watch the Oscars outside the United States. Right now, the fast-food rage in Berlin is pulled pork barbecue. Charles University in Prague, one of Europe’s oldest, has for the last 25 years fielded an Ultimate Frisbee team, which is to say that the Czech Republic has an Ultimate Frisbee league that has been carried along by multiple generations of students.