While waiting in line at Whitewater, an amusement park outside Atlanta, Tom Junod draws a very poetic analogy about America:
I have seen boobs the size of butts, and butts the approximate size of bumper cars. I have seen stretch marks in geographic profusion, and every kind of scar, from every kind of delivery system — the sinkholes left by bullets, the crenellations left by knife, the apocalyptic lightning left by scalpel and surgical saw. I have seen people comparing scars, to while away the time. I have seen piercings in Babylonian profusion, and nail art in colors found not in the rainbow but rather in boxes of Froot Loops. And I have seen tattoos — oh, Lord, I have seen tattoos. … I have seen every form of erotic invitation and advertisement, not just tramp stamps but entire tramp field maps, and mothers of three and four and five with cobras and Tasmanian devils arising from their bikini bottoms. I have seen all the evidence I need that America, far from being a Christian nation, is at heart a pagan one, with democracy, at last, turning into a preference for the most personalized decoration.
But here’s the thing about waiting in line at Whitewater, here’s the lesson that you learn from the spectacle of America in the raw: It works.
When my daughter gapes and marvels, I tell her that human beings come in all shapes and sizes, and it’s an explanation that seems to satisfy her because it’s inescapable. When I hear the censorious voice in my head saying that the woman in front of me shouldn’t be wearing that bikini, I go on to draw the only conclusion that the evidence all around me permits: that no one should, and that therefore everyone can. Going to Whitewater is like bathing in the Ganges, with chlorine and funnel cakes — and also with the elemental difference that not everyone is poor, lowly, untouchable, an outcast. Rather, everyone is quite simply American, and so the line slouches and stumbles forward, the very definition of a mixed blessing — a blessing mixed black and white, rich and poor, slovenly and buff, and so on down the line.
He thinks the FlashPass, where $40 buys patrons the ability to skip the lines, has ruined the democratic experience.
The Dish 