Bunker America
Simon Barnes
IN Anne Tyler's book The Accidental Tourist, the hero writes travel books with whose help the reader can feel that wherever he is in the world, he is still snugly at home in Hydrantville, USA. With such a book, you can always find a hotel with the right sort of plumbing and the right sort of proximity to McDonald's.
You can travel across Europe and the world without ever once needing to step outside America, navigating from Hilton to Hilton via the American Express. Leaving America is a step into the unknown, a step away from civilisation into some lesser place with lower standards. In times of trouble, you simply can't rely on abroad.
When, during the Gulf War, thousands of Americans cancelled trips to Europe we smirked a little at their eccentric notions of geography. But it wasn't really bad geography at all; it was more a feeling that leaving America at such a time was profoundly wrong.
It's not a thing that rationalises very easily. Americans talk about security, but American security is pretty amateurish compared with our own. I went to the Super Bowl during the Gulf War and was surprised how free 'n' easy security was. I was at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, which was somewhat better — though there was the story of the man who absentmindedly brought a gun into the athletics stadium; and, of course, a bomb in the street.
But the mustn't-leave-America thing is not logical; it's atavistic. The decision to postpone the Ryder Cup — the biennial competition between the golf professionals of the United States and of Europe — for a year is the right one: it's not really the moment for getting overexcited about golf. But it has its basis in the same atavistic retreat to Bunker America. So far as the American golfers are concerned, the treelined lawns and artfully positioned lakes of Sutton Coldfield are as inhospitable as the mountains of Afghanistan.
'A golf tournament would be an easy place to commit mass murder,' said Steve Loy, the agent for two of the American golfers. Tiger Woods, the world's leading golfer, added, 'I definitely think it's the right decision, especially with retaliation imminent.'
All of which gives the unfortunate impression that the Ryder Cup has been postponed out of funk. In a sense this is so, but most of us will be pretty glad anyway. The real point is that the Ryder Cup would have been embarrassing. It is like the standard rebuke to a tactless spouse, `Darling, this is not the moment.'
America doesn't do international sport. Baseball's World Series encompasses all the world that matters, plus Canada. Local disputes are all America needs from sport on a day-to-day basis. An international competition is a real break in the pattern, and even at the best of times America finds them hard to deal with. Two years ago, American triumphalism at the Ryder Cup caused deep and bitter feelings. The Ryder Cup has become Arrogance v. Envy.
It was the last thing we needed, in short. So the American golfers will stay in the United States, while across the world we will do our best to carry on in that strange place that is Not The United States. Bunker America: an entrenched position is a place of strength that can so easily become vulnerable.
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