I think there's also:

- Scott Fitzgerald - Mark Twain - Herman Melville - John Steinbeck - Wall Whitman - E. Allan Poe - Ginsbert - Bukowski - Charlie Chaplin - Miles Davis - Bob Dylan - (countless others)

Depends on where/what you choose to look. I understand that the average American is not all that knowledgeable but neither is the average European, Australian, Japanese or Nigerian...

Just nitpicking, but Chaplin was born in the UK and was already a vaudeville star when he was signed up by Karno and went to Hollywood. His status as an immigrant led to calls for him to be deported when he protested against HUAC. In the end, when he left for the premier of Limelight in London in 1952, the AG revoked his re-entry permit, and he didn't return to the US for twenty years.

Which is not to deny that his silent movie career isn't American culture; just that Chaplin's relationship with America was complicated.

I didn't know the details, thanks for sharing.

I believe that he shaped part of the US and World's culture with movies like "The dictator"[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sfJxdytYn4

> Wall Whitman

Is that what he will be known as from now on? :)

On a more serious note, it's interesting to reread his poem _America_, which was certainly written more as an aspiration than a description at the time. However, this election makes you wonder whether the aspiration is even there anymore (from either side, if we're being honest).

| Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, | All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old, | Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, | Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, | A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, | Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

The Iraq war is the cultivation of American culture?

> all the things you said

Fuck yeah?