And in Iceland, “the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons.” Good stuff. But I do have reservations.
Won’t banning strip clubs simply push such clubs underground, thus creating a new blackmarket of exploited women? Is regulation of the sex industry rather than outlawing it a better option?
The audience was typical of a large Beck fan gathering — predominantly over 50 and white and heavy on retirees, the jobless and military veterans, or the kind of people who now often receive government benefits like Medicare or unemployment checks that would likely get hammered if policymakers actually listened to Beck’s budget scheme.
He ends the rally while predictably choking back tears. For fuck’s sake.
Last but not least, a Q&A read with Chinua Achebe, author of one of my all-time favourite books, about things falling apart again in his homeland, Nigeria.
Have you ever notice those strange moments when you suddenly hear a particular phrase, a particular word, a particular name or a particular place a lot in a short period of time? Your friends who don’t know each other might suddenly start mentioning it in the same timeframe, or you might be thinking or reading about something then see it on TV, or a rarely-used word might suddenly start being used by everyone? You think to yourself, “Goodness, I was just talking about that, thinking about that, reading about that, listening to that…”
Then, as quickly it appears, it disappears.
And so it has been in the past week for me. This time it’s not a topic that’s unusual, but just the number of people whose only common thread is their friendship or acquaintance with me. The topic? Well, not a topic as such but more of a sentiment: America is fucked and so are the Americans.
I have no idea where it came from. It just kept coming up in conversation and it’s been quite strong, hence the strangeness of it all. Anti-American sentiment is nothing new, I hear something negative nearly every day, but I wasn’t expecting it to come up in conversation with people I know.
What made it odder still was it wasn’t just American foreign policy that was the target of scorn, but the American people and the American culture as well. It was getting so that I was getting rather uncomfortable about it — what’s with the hate? What’s with the generalisations? The stereotyping? The idea that all Americans are a bunch of rednecks?
Because I know Americans as a whole aren’t like that. C’mon! Please! Be logical! Be sensible! 63.4 million people who voted for Obama can’t be wrong! (Yes, I have the hots for Obama. It’s not a well-kept secret.) I personally know a number of Americans who are progressive and open-minded and hated the direction their country was going during the Bush/Cheney years. Some of my best friends are Americans!
It was in the middle of this strange, but short-lived, phenomenon that I started, coincidentally, reading Stephen Fry in America.
Fry’s introduction made me think how the English and Australians have similar attitudes to Americans. He writes about the attitudes of his fellow Englishmen (and women) toward Americans — attitudes that were much the same I’d been experiencing here. It is an interesting hypothetical insight from a supremely intelligent and funny Pom.
I have often felt a hot flare of shame inside me when I listen to my fellow Britons casually jeering at the perceived depth of American ignorance, American crassness, American isolationism, American materialism, American lack of irony and American vulgarity. Aside from the sheer rudeness of such open and unapologetic mockery, it seems to me to reveal very little about America and a great deal about the rather feeble need of some Britons to feel superior. All right, they seem to be saying, we no longer have an Empire, power, prestige or respect in the world, but we do have ‘taste’ and ‘subtlety’ and ‘broad general knowledge’, unlike those poor Yanks.
…
Such Britons hug themselves with the thought that they are more cosmopolitan and sophisticated than Americans because they think they know more about geography and world culture, as if firstly being cosmpolitan and sophisticated can be scored in a quiz and as if secondly (and much more importantly) being cosmpolitan and sophisticated is in any way desirable or admirable to begin with. Sophistication is not a moral quality, nor is it (unless one is mad) a criterion by which one would choose one’s friends. Why do we like people? Because they are knowledgeable, cosmopolitan and sophisticated? No, because they are charming, kind, considerate, exciting to be with, amusing… there is a long list, but knowing what the capital of Kazakhstan is will not be on it. Unless, as I repeat, you are mad.
The truth is, we are offended by the clear fact that so many Americans know and care so very little about us. How dare they not know who our Prime Minister is, or be so indifferent as to believe that Wales is an island off the coast of Scotland? …
It was the last paragraph that particularly got me. I’ve been just as guilty as my fellow Australians in bitching that Americans don’t know where Australia is, thinking that Australia was just a tiny tiny little island, believing us when we tell them that kangaroos hop down our busy city streets, that we have koalas as pets in our lounge room, that we don’t have skyscrapers and motorways but live in shanties in the “outback”. I remember being in a Yahoo chatroom in the olden days telling a bunch of Americans that we don’t have toilet sanitation but that we shit in holes in the ground we dug up. Their response was hilarious — until one American guy came in and told them I was bullshitting them. Oooh, the anger! I left in a hurry.
American foreign policy and even some of their internal/national policies often leave us aghast and angry. The Christian Right are just simply bigoted and awful. But let’s leave the anger there and not blame the people themselves.
Except for those dumb fucks who voted for Bush/Cheney in the first place, of course.
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