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The other night, something led me to watch the MTV European Music Awards. The program was the most ridiculous and absurd celebration of pop culture I’ve ever seen.

Of course, it’s so easy to talk about how the music and artists represented on these kind of shows are a joke, but what really fascinated me was how undeniably American the European Music Awards were.

30 Seconds To Mars sported matching Barack Obama tees and got the crowd to cheer for his presidency. Later, Katy Perry also showed off a hideous Barack Obama dress. Kanye West and Estelle performed “American Boy,” the set ending with a huge image of Obama’s face on the screen behind them and Kid Rock played that terrible “Sweet Home Alabama” mashup song with red, white and blue guitars and stars and stripes serving as the backdrop for the band. All of this American nonsense at Liverpool’s European Music Awards.

It just so happens that this weekend here in CU is a much more appropriate time and place to be American. Day to day, it can be easy to forget about what makes us American with how globalized our media has become. Our music is everyone else’s music, our movies are theirs, our news is their news, and our politics becomes so much a part of world politics. As MTV and other byproducts of American capitalism continue to permeate across seas taking homegrown talent and genius and force-feeding it to other cultures around the world, it becomes harder to identify with some sort of unified “American” identity.

But that’s why 4th of July can always feel so good to celebrate; because it reminds us that it’s not the homogenized, cross-continental pop culture that defines our nation. While Kid Rock can destroy American rock all he wants overseas, it won’t keep us at home away from a good cookout, a nice glass of lemonade and a night of fireworks. It’ll just piss off the Europeans, but I’m sure they’re used to it.

So enjoy your 4th of July weekend. Sit on a lawnchair, watch a parade, and enjoy some good barbeque because, like it or not, they’re undeniably American.