In a delightful series of articles from across the United States, Frankfurter Allgemeine's Washington correspondent Matthias Rub has been taking the pulse of the United States three months before the election. Rub shows that not all reporting from rural America has to be marred by popular stereotypes and old clichés.
Starting from Washington D.C., Rub spurned the main highway (I-95) and drove south on the smaller Route 29 to get a better sense of rural America. En route to Florida, Rub filed reports on the rich history of Monticello, the Virginia home of Thomas Jefferson, on the rapid high-tech business expansion in Charlotte, North Carolina, and on the great human sacrifices on display at the Fort Stewart military base in Georgia where 414 flowers are planted to honor the 414 Georgians who have fallen in Iraq.
Rub's articles do a fine job of displaying America's diversity, often neglected by Europeans who see the United States as a homogenous country. Take the stark contrast between Charlotte, where Rub described the "amazing development" of the last two decades, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he found one of the highest rates of financial foreclosures. In Fort Lauderdale, so-called Repo-Men, or repossession agents, are flourishing:
“Perhaps it's no coincidence [given the high foreclosure rate] that a company is headquartered here, which according to its own data is not only the uncontested world market leader, but which has also tripled its operations in the past three years. The company is National Liquidators, which specializes in seizing and auctioning all kinds of water vessels from jet skis and sailboats to fishing boats, yachts, and small cruise ships. () In Florida alone, an average of five boats are seized every day.”
From Florida, Rub travelled to Biloxi, Mississippi, and Kraemer, Louisiana where he filed a report August 6. You can follow Rub's tour on the website of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Rub's itinerary so far:
Undated: ‘Monticello (Virginia): On U.S. 29 through Virginia’
August 2: ‘Charlotte (North Carolina): Where the Crisis is still Distant’
August 3: ‘Fort Stewart (Georgia): Inexhaustible Stock of Flags’
August 4: ‘Fort Lauderdale (Florida): The Business of “Repo Men”‘
August 5: ‘Biloxi (Mississippi): Gambling is the Savior’
August 6: ‘Kraemer (Louisiana): Banana Republic in the River Delta’
