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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 12. August 20, 1947

American Way of Life

American Way of Life

News Item: Hollywood producer claims that American movies serve to tell the rest of the world about life in the United States.

The average income in the United States is about $25,000 a year. Nearly everybody owns an automobile and eighty-five per cent, of these are gaudy convertibles or huge limousines. The other fifteen per cent, are obsolete but hilariously-decorated jalopies used by highschool students.

A large percentage of American men are either devastatingly clever authors, pipe-smoking engineers, atomic scientists, brilliant doctors or lawyers but rarely have time to work at these noble professions. After reaching fifty they become gruff but kindly financial tycoons.

Most of the women are models, actresses, debutantes or any combination thereof, who do nothing but contemplate their [unclear: mirro] their wardrobes, each other's husbands, drink or suicide.

Nearly all young people meet each other in night clubs, country clubs or on the Fifth Avenue bus. They are married, in love, or otherwise embroiled after about three hours. These gay couples live out the six or eight months of their married lives in a plush hotel, swanky penthouse or a cute little cottage in the country.

An "increasingly large part of the population is divided between fearless private detectives and suave gangsters who operate fancy gambling clubs. They share between them well upholstered blondes with voices on the sexy side of laryngitis.

Between the sky-scraping penthouses of the East and the luxurious swimming pools of the West exists a wild country inhabited by horse thieves, card sharps, eccentric preachers, fast shooting cowboys, wayward wenches and gallant bandits, all of whom are busily killing each other off.

America in remarkably blessed with a lack of Labour Unions, minority problems, poverty, unemployment, political thought, housing shortage—and flat-chested women.

* *

Mrs. Hedda Dyson.
Is most surprisin',
She condemned our demonstration.
To the women of our nation.