French kiss, Italian ice, Spanish moss

Three notes on the pithy neo-liberal apologia that is Brad Paisley's "American Saturday Night" 1) "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the internationalism of the US city was largely restricted on the one hand to recognizing the connections of capital and the market and on the other to the recognition of nostalgic if palpably real Little Italies, Little Taiwans, Little Jamaicas or Little San Juans that dotted the urban landscape, as if to allow a tokenist internationalism at the neighborhood (working class) scale while insisting on the Americanism of the city as a whole." (53) -- Neil Smith, "The Revanchist City," New Metropolitan Forms (Polygraph 8/9), 1996 2) Knowingly or not, the lyric's (very well-executed) conceit resembles Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's (even more well-executed) "Rhode Island Is Famous For You", from the 1948 revue Inside U.S.A.. (The linked version is Blossom Dearlie's, the swingingest I know; the verse, very similar to Paisley's bridge, can be heard at the top of Nancy LaMott's more staid rendition.) 3) Paisley's souped-up chicken-pickin' guitar breaks are off the hook.