Only Two Things: Are Americans Puritanical?

The best women golfers in the world are in Europe right now. They're in Evian-Les-Bains, a magically beautiful place between the shores of Lake Geneva and the towering peaks of the French Alps, getting ready for this week's the Evian Masters.

We'll be talking about this popular tournament in the the first part of our show tonight... as well the recent Open Championship and the upcoming Ricoh Women's British Open. And because it's being talked about so much lately, we'll also touch upon the increasingly global nature of professional golf.

Which leads us to the second part of our show and our topic: Are Americans Puritanical? And consequently, is "the-rest-of-the-world" much more open-minded and enlightened than we yanks are? That's what I'll be asking on the show tonight, inspired by the current international golf events and and by an experience I had over this past weekend.

We were in New York City for a dinner party on Saturday, at the new home of my college roommate, who originally comes from Denmark. She's lived in the US since she met her American husband here over a decade ago, and they recently bought an awesome UWS duplex. This was a housewarming of sorts.

Both Britta and David have international jobs; she works fora UN Agency and he's with an international bank. As a result their guests were from all over the globe. In fact, of the 16 of us, only four... including myself and our host... were US natives. The other two Americans were guys... one married to a Colombian and the other to a Russian... while my husband Nick, as you may already know, is French. There was also a British couple and a Swiss couple... and rounding out the multifarious mix, a Jordanian with his Finnish fiancee and an Italian whose date was from Singapore.

Everyone's English was quite fluent... made more so by the copious cocktails and excellent wine... and there was a lot of light-hearted banter about the cultural nuances expats encounter when living in the US. After dinner as we sipped coffee and Courvoisier, David... who tends to get very obnoxious verbose when he's blitzed had a couple of drinks... declared, "Americans are puritanical idiots whose judgmental attitudes lead them to pornography obsessions and psychiatrist's couches". Or something to that effect. Anyway, as you can imagine, his sloshy statement led to a very lively discussion... and made me think this would be a great topic for "Only Two Things". So that's what I'll be asking tonight. Are Americans in fact "puritanical" as a society and does this lead to hypocrisy and closed-mindedness? Did it perhaps, exacerbate the the consequences of the Tiger Woods scandal?

That's what we'll be talking about tonight on "Only Two Things". We'll be broadcasting from 9:30 - 10:30PM ET. And you can weigh in, on-air by using call-in number 917-889-9592. Or join the conversation in the chat room or on Twitter... or just listen at BlogTalkRadio. Talk to you tonight.