This article reads like bad comedy. At least I hope it is.

It's one thing to say, "I don't enjoy fireworks very much". That's on you, shrug. But this schmuck is saying "I don't enjoy fireworks -because I'm smarter than you-" What a bunch of shite. Anyone who feels they have to sacrifice visceral pleasures in order to live a life of the mind is nothing but an intellectual poseur. Troy's laughable self-caricature of high-brow sensibility is paper thin.

And all prose, no poetry. Where is your sense of romance? Human beings are lighting up the sky, turning night to day with gorgeous color - in that display there are 100,000 years of cultural and technological evolution. There is the occasion for the exceedingly, and increasingly, rare chance for Americans of mixed economic, social, and ethnic backgrounds to rub shoulders and share blanket space on a grassy lawn somewhere. There's beauty and community and fun. What kind of sad-sack childhood did you have, anyway?

So well put, Travers, your last paragraph - and exactly right.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be humor, but since I have a fairly good read on satire/sarcasm (I am genX, after all), I can only conclude that this guy's either an utter snob or an incredibly tone-deaf "humorist."

We end our day with fireworks not because we're too stupid and like bright colors (though I do, really), but because otherwise it's just another day! - It's the 4th of July, commemorating our nation's birth (in so many ways), and the point is to draw people together.

Take a look at other federal holidays that have no such planning - most people aren't off on any of them, and those that we do get - Memorial day, Labor day - are passed over precisely _because_ we don't have anything to compel us out of our own backyards.

And to top it off, he cites royalty as if we should shudder at the thought. Um, yes, there have been corrupt monarchies, but they have also been patrons of art and invention like, oh, say, Louis XIV!

Ugh... I think I could go on all day about how stupid this piece was. Is this liberal "elitism" as they say? I wouldn't think so, because he apparently thinks it's much better that yokels blow limbs off in their backyards, and as a liberal myself I can only hope not...