America: The Good Parts Version (First Half)

Inspired by this post here, I've decided to come up with my own list.

1. Steven Reich
2. Tom Waits
3. The Library of America
4. David Foster Wallace
5. The Sound of Young America
6. The fact that Walt Whitman wound up on a box of chocolates.
7. Old Warner Bothers cartoons.
8. David Milch
9. HBO in general
10. Liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, Eschaton, and Hullaballo
11. Improv
12. Ornette Coleman
13. Amy Poehler
14. Mitch Hedberg
15. Early Feminists
16. Frederick Douglass
17. Chicago
18. Abraham Lincoln
19. The first Star Wars movie
20. The Velvet Underground
21. Netflix
22. Candy bars, especially Snickers
23. The spread of second-tier holidays like Halloween and Valentine's
24. Edward P. Jones
25. Donald Barthelme
26. Lois V. Vierk
27. The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists
28. Flickr
29. The New York School of poets
30. Joan LaBarbara
31. Joan Mitchell
32. Charles Mingus
33. Dave Douglas
34. Thelonious Monk
35. Uma Thurman
36. Orson Welles
37. Mark Twain
38. Anti-smoking campaigns from the 70s, and the lost public liberalism from that era in general.
39. Movie popcorn
40. Pixar
41. The Believer
42. Kasper Hauser
43. Philip Guston
44. New York City
45. Air travel
46. Increasingly better food
47. Iowa
48. The Kansas City Chiefs
49. The voice of Charles Kurralt
50. All Charlie Brown holiday specials