Alistair Cooke remembered

Cooke spent his life trying to explain America to others, an occupation familiar to the hordes of foreign journalists who just spent the last two years on the U.S. campaign trail. This Australian journalist has been convinced by her experience that it’s a very difficult job. It might not have been an easy job, but Cooke made it seem easy. His radio series, �Letters from America,� covered all the major news stories, like when John Glenn orbited the earth for the first time. You could almost say that Cooke was obsessed with America. He first came here in 1933 and became a U.S. citizen in 1941. but his daughter said Cooke’s love of America started before that, when American soldiers during the First World War stayed in his parent’s house. The daughter has just published a series of letters from Cooke’s radio series and his articles for The Guardian newspaper. She says Cooke was famously neutral when it came to politics and she has no doubt that Cooke predicted that a national crisis of some sort would bring about a benevolent leader who mobilizes the best of America. Things have changed since Cooke first started reporting on America all those years ago, but for this reporter of The Guardian, the job of explaining America to the rest of the world is still a difficult one. Alistair Cooke would’ve been 100 years today.