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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (19022)	1/28/2003 5:20:28 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23908

A great article: The New York Review of Books February 13, 2003 Feature Anti-Europeanism in America By Timothy Garton Ash nybooks.com Excerpt: We also need to keep a sense of humor. One reason Europeans like to laugh at President George W. Bush is that some of the things he has said --or is alleged to have said-- are funny. For example: "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." One reason Americans like to laugh at the French is that there is a long Anglo-Saxon tradition --going back at least to Shakespeare-- of laughing at the French. But there's also a trap here. Conservative writers such as Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn make outrageous statements, some of them obviously humorous, some semi-serious, some quite serious. If you object to one of the serious ones, they can always reply "but of course I was only joking!" Humor works by exaggeration and playing with stereotypes. But if a European writer were to describe "the Jews" as "matzo-eating surrender monkeys" would that be understood as humorous banter? Of course the context is very different: there has been no genocide of the French in the United States. Yet the thought experiment might give our humorists pause. Anti-Europeanism is not symmetrical with anti-Americanism. The emotional leitmotifs of anti-Americanism are resentment mingled with envy; those of anti-Europeanism are irritation mixed with contempt. Anti-Americanism is a real obsession for entire countries-notably for France, as Jean-François Revel has recently argued. Anti-Europeanism is very far from being an American obsession. In fact, the predominant American popular attitude toward Europe is probably mildly benign indifference, mixed with impressive ignorance. I traveled around Kansas for two days asking people I met: "If I say 'Europe' what do you think of?" Many reacted with a long, stunned silence, sometimes punctuated by giggles. Then they said things like "Well, I guess they don't have much huntin' down there" (Vernon Masqua, a carpenter in McLouth); "Well, it's a long way from home" (Richard Souza, whose parents came from France and Portugal); or, after a very long pause for thought, "Well, it's quite a ways across the pond" (Jack Weishaar, an elderly farmer of German descent). If you said "America" to a farmer or carpenter in even the remotest village of Andalusia or Ruthenia, he would, you may be sure, have a whole lot more to say on the subject. [...] ______________________________