Mark Steel: How I discovered an American icon
It was like booking a decorator, then when he comes round it turns out he's Leonardo da Vinci

Published: 20 June 2007

America is a country that thrives on its famous images. For example, last week I was at the entrance to the Empire State Building when a tour guide approached me.

“Hey,” he said urgently, “do you know you can save money by buying a three-stop ticket? The Manhattan Special gets you up here, then a tour bus takes you to Ground Zero, and then on to the Statue of Liberty.”

So presumably, before the Twin Towers were destroyed, you only got TWO tourist attractions for your ticket. See, Bin Laden's given the world more value for money. The next day I walked past Ground Zero, and while contemplating the poignancy of this building site, a salesman tapped me on the shoulder. He was one of a team from a company and they each held a leather-bound collection of photos of the Twin Towers on fire.

“Hi, I'm offering souvenirs of 9-11,” he informed me. What are you supposed to say to that? Are you meant to go, “Oo yes, the fire on that one's a LOVELY shade of crimson.”

Give it a couple of years and they'll have one of those simulators there, where for $12 you'll be strapped into a seat and a commentary will start. “Hi, I'm David Hasselhoff and I'd like to take YOU on a tour of ‘The 9-11 experience’. As we begin it's a bright September morning and all the staff on floor 103 are settling down to a busy day sending emails. But uh-oh - doesn't that plane seem a little low to you? Heck, it's heading straight for the water cooler.”

Then the simulator will rattle about for a minute until you're carried outside by an actor dressed as a fireman.

Then you'll be shown into the gift shop where you can buy a World Trade Centre “rubblestorm”, a paperweight you can turn upside-down and shake to make all the bits fly about. Or disposable Tower lighters, so that every cigarette will remind you of that memorable day - $5 each, or why not pay $8 for both? (But remember to always light the North one 15 minutes after the South one for the full effect).

And the Bush government is currently revisiting another historic image. Because, following international fury at how mean they were in providing compensation to victims of Hurricane Katrina, they've announced they have indeed revised their figures, and concluded they OVERPAID victims by $485m, which they're now demanding must be given back. Eventually they'll decide the people of New Orleans should pay the government compensation because the hurricane provided them with such fertile opportunities for wealth creation.

Obviously there's photos of houses being washed away that can be sold to every passer-by, but then they could offer a spectacular international two-stop flood ticket, taking tourists directly from New Orleans to somewhere wrecked by the tsunami. They could market themselves as the new Atlanta, set up the world's first underwater jazz festival, turn their houses into dolphinariums, but instead it's just whinge whinge whinge.

Later in the week I was reminded of another iconic American image, from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, when two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised a gloved fist and gave a black power salute on the medals podium during the US national anthem. I can just remember this, partly because I saw it on Breakfast Olympic Grandstand, which always seemed dramatic because it was so novel to have TV in the morning.

I was eight, living in an all-white, small town in Kent where the Black Panthers would have struggled to get much of an armed branch going. In my class if we'd have been told about the civil rights campaign we'd have said, “So they get to sit at the back of the bus ALL the time - WOW, can WE be negroes, Miss?” But as Smith and Carlos made their protest, my Dad, neither for them nor against, shrieked with excitement at the audacity of their gesture and I knew something historic was taking place. I had no idea why they were doing it, but I knew it was fantastic.

The incident became a symbol of the civil rights movement, so both athletes were stripped of their medals, banned from competing and reviled as demons. So last Saturday I was in a hotel in Chicago, where I'd been speaking at a conference of American socialists (add your own joke here if you like), and wandered into a room because apparently someone was giving a talk about sport. And there was John Carlos, defending his actions of 1968 to a young audience. I was more than starstruck; this was a figure who shaped history, not someone you imagine you could meet. It was like hiring a decorator to do your living room, then when he comes round it turns out he's Leonardo da Vinci.

But most impressively, John Carlos uses his role as an historic image for modern purposes, such as campaigning against the Iraq war. And gradually he's finding he's no longer in a small minority, as George Bush is now officially more unpopular in America than Nixon was at the time of Watergate. So anyone in Britain who still supports Bush is guilty of knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

Incidentally, the amount the government wants returned from New Orleans is around one-fiftieth of the sum recently approved as extra funding for the war. So they could decide not to reclaim the hurricane money, and only bomb forty-nine fiftieths as much of Iraq. But then the bit that wasn't bombed would complain, “That's not fair. How are we going to turn the place into a tourist attraction now?”