Once I had the pleasure to go to a public lecture by Sherman Alexie (recommended reading!!!) who is a Spokane indian (for the rest of you: that would be an important indian tribe in Washington, and a town on the Eastern fringe of the state).

Anyway, the theme of Alexie's lecture was what it was like to be brown in America after 9/11. He told this one anecdote about how, right after 9/11, he was waiting to cross the street at a traffic light in Seattle and this "phallic" [sic] pickup truck with a huge American flag rolled by and the driver screamed at him "Go back to your country!". When Alexie was able to recover from his laughter, he shouted back "you first!", but the truck was too far away.

The lecture was part of the promotional tour for Ten Little Indians (recommended reading!) and a lot of the anecdotes and impressions in the lecture were actually incorporated into the stories in the book. I don't remember whether the one about the pickup truck was.

Alexie's lecture was more like stand-up comedy all the way, but with lots of food for thought.

Hmmm... I don't know what the point of this whole rant is... Hey, I also suggest Maps in a Mirror, the collected short stories of Orson Scott Card.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman