I recently came across an article from the 2008 election in California regarding Prop 8. For those of us with bad memory prop 8 aimed at ratifying previous court rulings granting same sex couples the right to marry. In a Fox News article regarding prop 8 Tom Hanks is quoted having said that Mormon Prop 8 supporters were “un-American.” Subsequently, this entry is not about Prop 8 it’s about a problem which has raised from media outlets such as FOX news, ABC, and even senators such as Rep. Michele Bachmann. Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001 the media has found its new McCarthy era witch hunt. The media has thrown the word Un- American around for any reason imaginable; for instance on July 23, 2007, the City Council of Annapolis, Maryland, convened to consider a bill banning plastic shopping bags from the city, in order to protect the marine life of Chesapeake Bay. Safeway with the backing of The Capitol (Annapolis Daily Newspaper) characterized the Annapolis bill, and presumably the motives of its proponents, as “un-American”. The term Un-American dates back to 1934 during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, The most famous use of the term was in the title of the House Un-American Activities Committee which was started to combat Nazi and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) activity in the US during World War II and which later investigated the activities of Communists and purported Communists in the US. By 1959, however, former President Harry S. Truman had denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee as the “most un-American thing in the country today.”
So the question remains why has the term stuck around? And what does it mean today?
The former question is one that cannot be answered without extensive research as the term has been used to imply anything from treason as in the case of Adam Yahiye Gadahn the pro Al-Qaeda American Terrorist who On October 11, 2006, became the first indictment for treason against the United States since 1952. A Murdoch-owned channel was quoted calling him “Un-American”. Consequently the term has also been used by people like Fox Business Channel analyst Jonathan Hoenig, who stated in rebuttal to president Obama’s call for Americans to devote themselves to something greater than themselves. “Individuals, especially young people, should essentially … ‘devote themselves’ to something greater than themselves — sacrifice their own wants, their own interests, to serve the common good, whatever they happen to believe it is at the time. To me, that’s very un-American.” Thus it is obvious that the term is thrown around for any reason.
The later question however can be explained through simple economics. The ultimate goal of any business is to produce an income, and simple laws of economics tells us that the more consumers one has the more income one generates, thus; as it is with all other businesses media outlets look for consumers. consequently, words such as “Un-American” are thrown around not so much to explain a state of being rather to elicit a certain human curiosity. Finally in order to understand why the term has stuck around it is imperative that we look at what draws the consumer to terms such as Un-American.
After 9/11 the Bush Administration with the help of multi-million dollar P.R. firms signed into law the “Patriot Act”, and thus dubbed some actions as Patriotic and some as Un-Patriotic. For example under the act it was Patriotic to spy on everyday Americans and it was unpatriotic to question the “decider” (a term George W. Bush used in 2001 while referring to himself). How does this link in to the question of being American or Un-American? The simple explanation is conditioning by drawing upon pre-constructed fears — by this I mean the fear generated by people such as McCarthy during the cold war, who dubbed Americans with Communist ties as Un-American and thus Dangerous to our everyday life—McCarthy produced a snowball affect which has forever associated a term with danger, and has thus been used to classify groups of people into safe or dangerous. Nonetheless most of us would agree that if one lives in the United States it is Un-American for that person to secretly devise plot to destroy its people for the benefits of another country. However to ban plastic bags is not an act of treason or anti- American, but by using terms associated with greater fear the media manages to produces a sense of fear which then becomes crucial information to media consumers. It is ultimately our job as media consumers to read meaningless terms such as Un-American.
