WEIRDLAND: Happy 4th July!

Robert Mitchum and Barrie Chase in "Cape Fear" (1961)

"Cape Fear": Fireworks are as much a part of July 4 celebrations as the ability to recall whether it was Jefferson or Adams that wrote the Declaration of Independence. Independence Day parades aren't as omnipresent as they used to be, but you can still find them slowly traveling down Main Street in some towns. Martin Scorsese took both the parade and the fireworks motifs common to July 4th celebrations and infused them with the kind of sickly truthful malevolence that only he used to be capable of pulling off.

Robert de Niro as Max Cady in "Cape Fear" (1991)

Scorsese's remake of "Cape Fear" utilizes Independence Day celebrations as a metaphorical reminder that Max Cady may well have done some bad things, but he was still entitled to fair legal representation. The noble perversion of Max Cady as a streetwise combatant for the very rights being demanded by those attending the Continental Congress usually passes over the heads of "Cape Fear" viewers; probably because to consider Max as the contemporary offspring of Sam Adams and John Hancock is just too much perversion to bear. Source: movies.yahoo.com

36 Reasons It's (Still) Good to Be an American Man
Right after 9/11, we conjured 162 ways to love this place. Ten years later, there's every reason to feel just as patriotic — or at least as hungry, happy, thirsty, and proud to be a part of it all. -By Charles P. Pierce