For I am a rain dog too

A fairly arbitrarily selected list of twelve of my favorite Americans, real and fictional, whose admirable and/or compelling qualities I find distinctly American, offered in no particular order and without further commentary (for now):

1. Hunter S. Thompson
2. Ernest Hemingway
3. Tom Waits
4. Jay Gatsby
5. Denis Leary
6. Tony Stark
7. William F. Buckley, Jr
8. Richard Nixon
9. Jack Donaghy
10. Jay-Z
11. Kanye West
12. Woody Allen

Honorable mentions:
Roger Sterling
Dagny Taggart
Charlie Wilson
Nicolas Cage
Johnny Cash
Humphrey Bogart

"A rain dog is - you notice it more in lower Manhattan than anywhere else - after a rain in New York all the dogs that got caught in the rain, somehow the water washed away their whole trail and they can't get back home so about 4 in the morning you see all these stranded dogs on the street and they're looking around like - won't you help me get back home, sir, please - excuse me sir - excuse me sir - can you help me find my way back home - all makes and models, the short ones, the black ones, the tall ones, the expensive ones, the long ones, the disturbed ones, they all want to get home.

So that's a rain dog. It's like falling asleep somewhere and you thought you knew where you were and when you woke up - it's like Mission Impossible - they changed the furniture and the walls and windows and the sky turned a different color and you can never get back..." - Tom Waits