Friday, November 27, 2009
No, Europeans just think that, and I'd say that even if I knew any Europeans, which I don't, or even knew where this thing called "Europe" was, which I don't, and don't care to quite frankly. But seriously, anyone over undergraduate age knew that nothing of substance was going to change with the Presidential changeover. The Euros and their quite understandable inferiority complex were going to remain the same nose in the air types long after they'd finished spending their ancestors' trust funds and the mice had chewed through the moldering orientals. There aren't enough apologies in Barack Obama's lumbago-ridden back to change one darn thing because it's all beside the point.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Carol Gould at PJM: Are Americans Uniquely Insular and Ill-Informed? Or do Britons and other Europeans just say that because they are uniquely anti-American?
I wonder how many times a day Britons hear something nasty said about them on American radio and television or written about them in the American press, and how many expatriate Britons living abroad are confronted by aggressive Brit-haters.
In the past month I have been making careful note of incidents I feel are anti-American; why, you may ask, am I "at it" yet again and why is this being published in Pajamas Media? I feel it is important for Americans to understand what they might encounter on a 2009 Christmas trip abroad in order to avoid what the former CNN London bureau chief Walt Rodgers describes in his excellent October 15 editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. He recounts an incident in which an American accent roused someone's ire and violence ensued. Also, it is important for Americans who do business abroad to appreciate that the accent is not a ticket to happiness or success even in the milieu of Euro-Obama euphoria. Furthermore, the extremely influential BBC television and radio programs Any Questions (I have been a panelist on this show several times and have tried to defend the honor of the United States of America) and Question Time often promulgate misconceptions about the United States and Israel that go uncorrected.
So what? Well, in order for people like myself who live here and who wish to avoid a heart attack, it is unfortunate that so much rubbish about America and Americans is stated as fact in the media and then one is relentlessly assaulted by an enraged Briton or European.
This happened in early November at London Mayor Boris Johnson's all-day conference on Olympics 2012 and the arts. At the end of the day I went to the reception and a tousle-haired young man came over to me and started asking me questions peppered with "Yeh?" His name is Tom and he is a cultural affairs aide to Mayor Johnson. I have no idea why, but he really laid into me...
