the Big Buddy patriotism turn: a good American when America isn't good

The pep-talk's political core, delivered in Schtitt's reported voice: the coach who is not American nonetheless "makes me proud to be American," teaching "how to learn to be a good American during a time, boys, when America isn't good its own self." The line is the theme's one earnest patriotism, and it is conditional — a good citizenship defined against a nation that has stopped being good, exactly the post-founding America the whole anthology diagnoses. (The sincerity/pedagogy register is irony-sincerity's [routed, batch 1], the tennis-nationalism is the-body-tennis'; landed here is the political clause about a nation no longer good.)