god, this is a great country

the july issue of GQ features writing about america: american icons, american immigrants, american cuisine, american soldiers. initially, i brushed them off as typical patriotism pandering articles but then i read an article chronicling the migration of a Meskhetian Turk family from Russia to Florida and I thought "Oh my God, that's me." the article, a wonderfully detailed and heart wrenching story about loss and hope, old country and new, innocence and consumerism, is about as introspective as you can get about the immigrant experience. of questions like "will my life be better there?" and "there are so many things at the supermarket." lovely, lovely article. interspersed throughout the magazine are little mini columns about famous immigrants, one was about Ang Lee and his fixation with American girls, and then another was about Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the now legendary artists who pulled off "The Gates" at Central Park earlier this year. and then it made sense that there was an article about jessica simpson being the quintessetial american corn-fed girl, and that the article about saddam hussein's prison wardens were a profile in american compassion. so brilliant.