America Needs More Ticker Tape Parades
The Women's National Soccer team received a tumultuous and well-earned "thank you" from America last month - a ticker tape parade through the "Canyon of Heroes" in Lower Manhattan. Tens of thousands gathered. Shredded paper and confetti flew (the ticker tape machine is obsolete) to honor their World Cup victory. It was a moment of celebration and unity for a nation that needs both.
The ticker tape parade has a long and glorious history since the first spontaneous outpouring in 1886 to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. In New York City, about two hundred have been held since. Twenty-five have honored sports figures (often, New York teams!), but the range of honorees includes military heroes, aviation and space pioneers, and foreign dignitaries.
In 1889, a ticker tape parade celebrated George Washington on the centennial of his taking the oath of office as our first president. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh was honored for the first solo flight over the Atlantic. In 1945, General Dwight David Eisenhower, commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, received a ticker tape parade from a grateful nation. A year later, it was Winston Churchill, one of about ninety foreign dignitaries chosen to be recognized. The ticker tape parade has honored veterans of most of America's wars, scientific achievements, and even a musician - Van Cliburn, for winning the Moscow International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.
Yet, in the last twenty years, only six ticker tape parades have been held, all for achievements in sports. No international leader has been honored since Nelson Mandela in 1990.
What accounts for the decline of this American institution? Perhaps we are a nation whose attention is so split that we cannot coalesce around one achievement. Perhaps cable channels, the Internet and social media have segmented our attention among so many people and events that sports is the sole unifier. Perhaps potential honorees must first pass through the prism of politics and too many become suspect because of their ideology. Perhaps our nation has become so insular and self-centered that foreign leaders seldom enter our consciousness, unless we hate them. Perhaps we lack unifying national goals whose accomplishment is so difficult that they deserve this form of gratitude. Perhaps we've just become jaded, accepting the argument hawked in some circles that, face it, the "American century" is over.
Still, stellar achievements continue. It's the celebration of them that does not. Why no ticker tape parade for the creators of the computer and the Internet, which have enriched and saved so many lives and built the world's modern economy? Why no parades for singers and actors who have raised hundreds of millions for charity and are American ambassadors to the hungry and war-torn refugees? Why no parades for Bill and Melinda Gates and other philanthropists whose charitable giving is helping reverse poverty and disease overseas and improve education at home? Why no parades for advances in medicine that have eradicated disease and extended life expectancy, including battling malaria and conquering the death-sentence of HIV? Why no ticker tape for international winners of the Nobel Peace Prize or other Nobels, whose values mirror our own and whose achievements will pay dividends for decades to come? We have honored veterans of the Gulf War, but why have we not honored our Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers and veterans who have, after all, fought our longest wars?
It is not just honorees of ticker tape parades that benefit. We need such moments of coming together. We need to remember what democracy can accomplish and how it stimulates innovation and the drive to achieve, lest we weaken ourselves in our sour moods of conflict, skepticism, and conspiracy theories. We need to show the world that we value leaders in peace, excellence, and sacrifice for the common good no matter what country they come from. Ticker tape parades that shine a light on them also shine a light on America. On the beam of that light our vision and values travel the world. This is the soft power so essential to remind other nations that American values go far beyond military might and making money.
To many, whether we have a ticker tape parade now and then is no big deal. But the lack of unifying goals, a national sense of achievement and being able to take pride in what democracy can give the world is.
Photo Credit: NASA, Apollo 11 Parade
