"The people I work with give me high-fives and say things like 'You can be proud to be from your country again.'"
I know I'm sure proud of my country. It even lets delusional morons like you pollute the airways.
3 more daze, and the 43rd best pres in history becomes an international war criminal. Too bad his supporters won't be prosecuted, too.
Americans abroad feeling the love again
By Mary Jordan
Washington Post
LONDON— As Micha Wyatt plans an inaugural bash at the Chicago Rib Shack in London, she is basking in the new warmth toward Americans overseas.
It's cool to be an American again, Wyatt said. "Finally! I'm tired of pretending I'm Canadian."
From Jakarta to Johannesburg, Americans who travel or live abroad are finding that instead of being scolded about the Iraq war, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or U.S. climate change policy, they are being hugged when strangers hear their accent.
"People would question me: 'Where are the weapons of mass destruction? What is America doing?'" said Wyatt, 38, a San Francisco native who said she does not align herself with any party but comes from a Republican family.
Since Barack Obama's election, she said, people want to hang out at American parties and talk about the latest news from Washington: "There is a buzz about America now."
Many Americans interviewed in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe said that for years they have felt "targeted" by critics of U.S. policies. They said they often did not volunteer that they were American, and several said they even dropped the word "Ottawa" into conversations to try to avoid confrontations.
Now, even in countries such as Japan and Australia, where Americans were generally not taken to task over Bush administration policies as they were in Europe, Americans interviewed said they suddenly have new cachet. Some compared
the feeling to the heady days after the fall of communism.
"It was cool to know an American" in the early 1990s, said Tanya Pampalone, a Los Angeles native who has long lived abroad and resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.
But the Bush era has been tough, she said, as many saw the United States playing the "bad guy" role in the world. She, like others interviewed, said she hesitated waving the red, white and blue in public.
But as goodwill toward Americans has returned, she recently allowed her 5-year-old daughter to bring a little American flag she had been waving in the car to a restaurant.
"A week before, I would have said to her, 'Just put the flag in the car. Let's not draw attention to ourselves,'" Pampalone said. But this time, she told her daughter, "'Great, take the flag,' and when she walked around saying, 'Yes, we can!' everyone in the restaurant was smiling.'"
Organizations of expatriates, including Democrats Abroad, say there have never been so many, and such large, celebrations outside the United States to mark the swearing-in of an American president.
In addition to sold-out balls in capitals around the globe, many other Obama bashes are planned. In Cambridge, England, people are gathering to listen to Obama's speech at a Hawaiian luau, a nod to Obama's roots in that state. In Antigua, Guatemala, Americans have hired a disc jockey to play Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and other tunes Obama keeps on his iPod. In Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama spent time as a boy, students from his former elementary school will perform a traditional dance at a party featuring some of his old classmates.
David St. Onge, 57, a John McCain supporter who works in the pharmaceutical industry and was in Moscow this week, said he has noticed a change in how his Russian clients treat him.
"They seemed to think better of Americans because we elected a black man as president," he said as he walked through Red Square. "They think we're more enlightened now."
Andrew Leik, 40, an architect from Michigan living in Cologne, Germany, said that along with "it definitely being much easier now to be an American" overseas, he has noticed that German friends who had refused even to visit the United States are planning vacations there.
In France, Rick Parks, 64, a retired New York City public school teacher, said he has noticed gestures of friendship and "definitely a change in attitude" toward the United States. Gone are the days when relations with France were so testy that french fries were briefly renamed "freedom fries" in U.S. House of Representatives cafeterias.
Parks said North African souvenir merchants at the landmark Sacre Coeur basilica in Paris smiled at him and hailed Obama's election as a victory for them all, saying: "You are our people."
Many people said they have been surprised that a new president in the White House would have such a direct impact on their lives thousands of miles away.
Brandon Luker, 26, a Ph.D. student from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is in India researching Islamic issues, said Muslim scholars have given him slightly better access since Obama's election.
Jennifer Granger, 34, a teacher from New York who lives in Prague, said she no longer hesitates to say she is American.
"Thank God! It feels better," she said. "The people I work with give me high-fives and say things like 'You can be proud to be from your country again.'"
In London, as part of the promotions related to Obama taking office, U.S. citizens can get into Madame Tussauds free on Inauguration Day, instead of paying entrance fees that start at $18. About 300,000 Americans live in Britain, and any of those, along with any visitors showing up with their passports, will be waved in.
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