Being All-American about twittering, fat burgers

What exactly qualifies something as "All American" these days? Maybe it doesn't mean what it used to. Change has come to America.

The All-American hamburger - once a simple thing - are now called "sick burgers" or something like that. It's about two-thirds of a pound of beef topped with a half-pound of cheese, lettuce, tomato, a cup of mayo, mustard, ketchup and enough other runny stuff that assures you'll wear most of it. One should probably just get naked and sit in the bathtub to eat the things.

Add two pounds of French fries and a 44-oz. barrel of cola-flavored high fructose corn syrup, and you have consumed enough calories to feed a third-world family for a month.

The All American way: More is better, ditto bigger. The economy has forced restaurants to give more food for less money.

I know I should feel I'm getting a bargain, which all Americans love, but the fact that they once charged me more for less leaves me with a "they aren't treating me better now; they were hosing me worse then" feeling.

The All-American religion has changed in many ways as well. Once, almost all Americans eschewed public discussions of religion. My friend Cliff pointed out many today take less joy from the belief they're going to heaven than the certainty that the many they hate are going to hell.

The immediacy of media plays more than a small part in the changes wrought on America. The impact was first felt when the images of Birmingham-Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses cemented for all time all of America's, and the world's, opinion of Alabama.

The media and Internet have brought America closer as it isolates everyone, and deadens to a blip the reaction to mass murder while it incites mass hysteria, collective grieving and special programming over the meltdown of plastic pedophiles....