When we all first saw "Gangnam Style" on YouTube and fell in love with South Korean sensation Psy, none of us could have imagined that a few months later we'd find out that he rapped in 2004 about killing Americans.
Rewind:
Why Psy and the Innocence of the Muslims Guy Are Nothing Alike
The exact lyric of the rap that has Psy in trouble now is "Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives/ Kill those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture/ Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers/ Kill them all slowly and painfully."
And while that's a crazy specific threat against "fucking Yankees," does anybody really care? Really?
We as Americans have demonstrated an immense ability to forgive our celebrities for things they've said and frankly, this is probably no different. After all, it didn't stop Psy from performing for President Obama's Christmas celebration days later.
Psy, to his credit, has already apologized for "any pain [he has] caused anyone by those words." Of course, that probably won't be enough for some of the crazily patriotic people like Bill O'Reilly, who are probably having strokes that this guy was allowed anywhere near the President (although perhaps not, considering their feelings on this particular President).
Let's be honest here, though, Psy probably didn't even need to bother apologizing. Aside from the trumpet-sounding, flag-waving patriots like Sean Hannity or Toby Keith, nobody is really all that concerned about this sort of thing anymore. The simple fact is that my generation, the 20- and 30-year-olds of 2012, don't exactly disagree with Psy about their country.
According to Gallup polling, the percentage of people who believe America is the greatest country in the world decreases sharply with age. Only 48 percent of Gen X-ers would say "U.S.A.!," and that number goes down to 32 percent for the "millennial" generation.
People still claim they are very patriotic, but even that is decreasing as the years go by. Not only are "millennials" less likely to identify as "very patriotic" than previous generations, but that drops a few points as each year goes by.
Furthermore, Americans as a whole are still attracted to a gimme word like "patriotic," but when asked if they were satisfied with their country, 77 percent reported they were not. I imagine, given the results of the other polls, that number would be much higher if we were only polling the younger generations.
