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The post we wrote yesterday about Rick Steves ("Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world.") seems reasonable if you only know the man through his travel shows on PBS. He was on the Town Hall stage for all of about four seconds last night before destroying that illusion. Actually, he lives in a few different worlds; one here, in Edmonds, Washington, U.S.A., and another in Europe where he spends a third of every year, and the conflict between those two equal something other than "pleasant." Steve was pissed last night during his "Travel as a Political Act" talk. It was an angry, wrathful travel guru working the microphone--A much different animal than the "This is reeeealy great" PBS guy in sensible shoes.
What's he so pissed off about? Ugly Americans, the current U.S. government, the war in Iraq, the war on drugs, the medical care system, the huge disparity between rich and poor in America, our enormous rate of incarceration, etc, etc. He said things like: "We're an empire. I'm not saying 'Evil Empire' and I don't mean that it's good or bad, but we just are. Terrorism is the natural result of defending the far reaches of your empire." "Third World debt is the slavery of the 21st Century." "The 'Ugly Groups' of tourists are the Americans, the Russians, the Japanese and the Germans. And the Indians are getting up there." Not the biggest bombs we've seen lobbed from the Town Hall stage, but more than we expected from Rick Steves. Most of that came somewhere near the end of what you might call Act II. He followed with the solution: that through travel--a specific style of travel that requires maximum interaction with the people and customs of a place--Americans can be exposed to creative solutions to various American problems, expand their world views to encompass that potential and implement them where needed at home.
We agree. A lot. We've got a lot of problems, the solutions to some of which can be found in Europe. Town Hall agreed, to the tune of a full house and a standing 'O' after he wrapped up. And yet, there are some problems. The Other Americans kept coming up; the Ugly Americans, the Bush electorate in their "Love it or leave it" tee shirts and their lack of respect for the rest of the world who were, earlier in the evening, banished by Rick to Hawaii or other hedonist travel destinations so that there would be more room for the Enlightened U.S. citizens in Europe or other proper travel destinations. Rick Steves knows he's in front of his congregation when he speaks in Seattle. "Seattle doesn't need my road show," he said in response to a question about how to get people to travel more. Fly-over country needs it. He doesn't call it that, he calls it "Middle America, where they don't have passports," but they're just different code words for the same 80% of the country that can be written off any number of ways. Red, Right, rural, no passport havin' assholes. There's both some truth and something ridiculous in suggesting that the only thing Joe Bush-Voting American-Flag-Tee-Shirt-Wearing Kansas farm guy needs to turn himself and the country around is a hundred days in Southern Italy. No shit! Ya think that might do some good?
But which is it? Do we want to get that guy fired up about Europe, buy him some tickets (because, although Steves claims that a trip to Portugal can be no more expensive than a trip to the Yucatan, the Yucatan is out of reach for a lot of Americans) and immerse his ass in some Mediterranean culture for a healthy string of weeks, even though his rude, loud, Americentric ways may cause Steves some embarrassment in Europe, or do we just continue sending the rednecks off to Hawaii on steerage cruises and keep the good stuff for ourselves while whining about the administration sitting in D.C. and the current state of things? Hey, we can forgive Steves that, though. That's a tough nut to crack, and similar to the conundrum the entire Left has to deal with both individually and as a whole. It's not even so dissimilar from that UW study that came out this week: How do you get Americans to lose weight? Simply pluck them out of their poor, uneducated zip codes and drop them down in 98103! Or Cinque Terre! That'd probably work, too.
At the end of the night one of the last audience members to approach the mic asked what Rick Steves would recommend to European tourists coming to the Pacific Northwest and Steves struggled to answer. He'd never considered the question. That is unforgivable.
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Rick Steves is better than any American. He is so good he is practically Canadian!
Also, he is a fresh vagina.
Question: if "redneck rubes" don't have passports, how can they also be ugly American tourists overseas?
One of these elitisms cannot be true.
This seems like such a chicken/egg problem. Are some Americans provincial because they don't travel? Or do they not travel because they're provincial?
So far as feasibility goes, I think it depends on the motivation to travel: some people are naturally drawn to bump up against different ways of thinking and will pay for it with their vacation time.
Some people need a more specific motivation -- I'm always impressed by pallid, glazed-eye bureaucrats who come back from exploratory fact-finding junkets all energized by the "new ways of thinking" they've come across. I think plenty of Americans have a better chance of getting their travel quota in through work than vacation.
that through travel--a specific style of travel that requires maximum interaction with the people and customs of a place--Americans can be exposed to creative solutions to various American problems, expand their world views to encompass that potential and implement them where needed at home.
I can't help but think of how harder it has become to take an airline flight these days.
Though you really don't need to fly to Europe to find creative, progressive solutions; you can get a decent, similar exposure by going to much-closer Canada.
Which is still easy to... oh, wait.
I don't disagree, but it's a funny sort of "maximum interaction" when the person encouraging it is a proud monoglot.
Most Americans can't afford to travel to the coast of their own country, let alone the coast of a country on a different continent. Is Rick Steves setting up some sort of plan to fund these diplomatic tours of duty?
...Not saying his guides aren't useful. Because they are. Really, really useful, to my parents who travel for work and need to know where they might find a decent cup of coffee and some pastries while they wait for their next meeting in Helsinki.
Air travel and tourism are an environmental disaster. How does Rick Steves justify his carbon footprint?
Velo, he got asked about that last night and I think he did really well with it. His company bought enough carbon credits last year to cover all of their flights. He talked about how he's not sure if that's a feel-good fix or an actual fix, but until he knows for sure he's going to continue on the carbon credit route. He talked about paying the "real cost" of things, like the real cost of a flight includes the carbon credits to offset it, and the real cost of a barrel of oil includes the cost of the military intervention necessary to procure it. He even indicated that we might have to end travel as we currently know it someday due to this issue.
Did he mention what the "real cost" of a dramatic decrease of American air travel and tourism to the world? By all means, restrict ugly, energy-hogging americans to traveling no further than their bicycle will take them. Sounds like a new and interesting form of isolationism that would bite us, and the globe, on its ass.
Most Americans say they can't afford to travel because it is not a priority. I am an only parent of two children and grossed $24,000 last year, just below poverty level in Washington State. But we have managed some pretty worthwhile, eye-opening, educational trips in the last few years. I don't follow the recommendations for accomodations or dining that Rick prints, because I want to discover my own favorites, but I do enjoy his stories about what he learns when he observes and participates in another culture. It is exciting to discover other peoples' ideas about what is a successful, fulfilled life and to submit to the expectations of the people who are your hosts.