Simon Schama composes one of his collections of historical things, this time of European anti-American attitudes throughout our history. The condensed version of the general attitude of the various academic, upper-class, or artistic personnages who have visited here and been appalled could be something along the lines of: "America was mean to us and she smelled!" Yes, even from Charles Dickens.
Oh well. It just goes to prove that we are a hard and unforgiving country to people who come here with the idea that we are stupid and primitive and therefore easy to manipulate. Sooner or later we will hand your ass to you for that attitude. If you don't like it, stay home.
(Via Gary Farber.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at March 6, 2003 12:04 AMNot long ago I was watching an old episode of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, one of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's action-adventure puppet shows from Britain. Captain Scarlet is basically about a global war against terrorists-- in this case, Martian terrorists with the fantastic power to make duplicates of people and things.
Anyway, in this episode the brave men of SPECTRUM are on the phone with an American general who advocates a massive nuclear strike against Mars in retaliation for some outrage or other. Since the Martian Mysterons are pretty much impervious to bombs, and are carrying on this whole terror war as payback for a mistaken attack on their home city, our heroes know that this would do little good; but the American-- who actually has a sign on his desk reading MIGHT MAKES RIGHT-- insists that "sometimes things are a lot simpler than you boys think" and has to be talked down from launching the missiles.
After he hangs up the phone, one of the SPECTRUM captains says something like "Of all the obnoxious, trigger-happy..." and gets interrupted by his commanding officer reminding him that dealing with this sort of thing is part of the job.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin at March 6, 2003 at 08:29 AMAmerica's almost rigid egalitarianism, a centuries-old tradition now, also tends to offend many Europeans who, whether they realize it or not, are still caught up in class-oriented hangups.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at March 6, 2003 at 11:57 AM