Déjà vu audio again: Craig Ferguson on living the American 'dream of justice'

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Déjà vu audio again: Craig Ferguson on living the American 'dream of justice' | Rereading Sport

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Déjà vu audio again: Craig Ferguson on living the American 'dream of justice' | Rereading Sport

Apropos reading for July 4! As the U.S. barrels past constitutional failure to concentration camps, the Scottish-born comic's memoir reads like an intervention against mindless tribalis.

Nathan Sager

Jul 04, 2025

Transcript

The beat here is capital-C Cope.

On this July 4, the reading is from TV’s Craig Ferguson. A celebrity memoir themed on the making of a naturalized American seems highly topical amid zealotry to unmake Americans.

This is what they call understating for effect. Like many Canadians, I have well-founded fears about the unchecked tyranny in the United States — and there are sporting ramifications since this lawless land is hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

So, seeking solace, I reached for my paperback of the Glasgow-born Ferguson’s — he’s Scottish, who knew! — memoir American On Purpose: The Improbable Adventures Of An Unlikely Patriot (HarperCollins, 2009; 3.93 on Goodreads). One needs what he says about the United States of America being aspirational. What is happening has been slow-brewed since the Powell Memorandum,1 but hyper-jetted from cheap eggs to constitutional failure to concentration camps in fewer than 12 months.

In the context of the current existential dread about a dying republic, American On Purpose reads like a passionate plea-slash-intervention. Who knows whether that was conscious? Ferguson is too deep to tip his pitch, but he is clear.

America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual but because we are always our most effective voice of dissent. The French may love Barack Obama but they didn’t fucking elect him. We did.
We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don’t like what I say or don’t agree with where I stand, then good. I’m glad we’re in America and don’t have to oppress each other over it.
We’re not just a nation. We’re not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for thousands of years. (American on Purpose, pg. 265)

The obvious compare-and-contrast with ICE goons kidnapping day labourers is obvious, eh?

Scarred

Ferguson came of age in 1970s Scotland. Recall, he was a postal worker’s son from a generation raised by a generation of war-scarred Scots. Remember, Glasgow is an industrial city, so it was a prime German bombing target in the Second World War during the formative years of his mum and dad.

One bit of Craig Ferguson trivia that a friend used to remind me of is that his favourite soccer club is Glasgow’s Partick Thistle. Of course, if you meet someone from Glasgow, your lazy question conversation starter is, “Celtic or Rangers?” And here is a Glaswegian who is neither.

I have never heard him explain why, other than to say he likes a kid. Thistle won the Scottish League Cup in the spring the future late-night host turned nine years old, in 1971, so that seems like a simple explanation. The deeper point, over time, is that Thistle is a second-tier alternative to the Old Firm rivalry between Celtic (Catholics) and Rangers (Protestants) that, in Ferguson’s youth, was looped into tribalism, that my-side-is-always-right, us-against-them binarism. And he saw that as a dead end and, no, no amount of exceptionalist beliefs can override it:

Sectarian violence was an odd little civil war where I grew up. Kids who you knew and liked could become enemies under the right circumstances. It (the Celtics and Rangers rivalry) was just an excuse for gang colors really. Morons battling from an early age over medieval religious hairsplitting that they didn’t really know or care about…
There was plenty of encouragement for this hatred from shameful clergy who stoked and provoked the fires of conflict, and from striving needy politicians who used the discord for their own advancement and should have known better.
… I remember thinking then, at around 14 years old, that if there was any God or church that endorsed this fucking madness, then I wanted no part of it.
That’s why I believe in a constitution which separates church from state. I’ve seen what happens when they get in cahoots. (American on Purpose, pg. 48-49)

Or as Ferguson put it once, in response to a question about Scottish nationalism: “It’s so divisive. It’s like how you felt at school, whether you were Celtic or Rangers. You’re aware the absolutes don’t welcome discussion.”2

Hear that? No absolutes. Well, maybe a few. You cannot be 100 percent absolutist about anti-absolutism, ’cause then you would be a cliché. And nobody wants that!