jimpeel
Well-Known Member
From the U.K. Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/4968562/Its-time-Europes-view-of-America-had-a-nice-new-day.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/4968562/Its-time-Europes-view-of-America-had-a-nice-new-day.html
It's time Europe's view of America had a nice new day
Expats in the United States are used to coming up against European anti-Americanism, says Laura Elsey. But, she argues, it's time the stereo-typing and scapegoating was eradicated.
By Laura Elsey
Last Updated: 5:50PM GMT 10 Mar 2009
'Americans are so stupid!" states the teenage daughter of good friends visiting us last year in Washington DC from the UK.
I have just finished telling her about a silly little misunderstanding of language that had taken place at our local supermarket (where, needing to buy butter, I had finally had to resort to doing a charade of milking a cow and buttering toast, with the assistant at the shop suddenly exclaiming, "Oh, you want buh-der!)
I study our young friend, wondering how a 17-year-old brain can already be so automatically programmed to espouse such views.
As an expat living in Washington, I am extremely used to spending (ill-afforded!) intellectual currency on defending Americans but, even so, the reaction of this lovely young girl has me releasing a large sigh of disappointment and thinking: "Oh no, not you too."
Expats living Stateside, often try to stave off verbal attacks on America by listing the many examples of American achievement and scientific discovery that we should all feel grateful about. We become a pastiche of John Cleese's character in Monty Python's Life of Brian. He asks, "Well, what have the Romans ever given us then, eh?", only for people to start shouting out a list which leaves him saying: "Well, alright, apart from the aqueduct, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, public baths, public order and wine – what have the Romans ever given us, eh?"
One could easily substitute the word 'Americans' for 'Romans' and list a plethora of wonderful American inventions; the first ever powered human flight, animation, the bra, oral contraception, the assembly line, personal and laptop computers, carbon dating, celluloid, blood banks and a multitude of other amazing contributions. But, as in the film, the Romans would still be hated – loathed all the more for their brilliance of ingenuity. Is it, then, a type of jealousy that makes Europeans so detest Americans? (A very good question -- j)
I do realize that it may seem naïve, verging on downright neglectful, to blame the dislike of Americans on jealousy. What of globalisation? What of the hypocrisy of Guantánamo? What of Iraq? What of the non-ratification of the Kyoto Accord? There seems to be a veritable moral smorgasbord of distaste for us Europeans to choose from but are we balanced in our views?
To try to better understand the European dislike of Americans, I asked the BBC's North America Editor, Justin Webb, to shed a little insight. Justin has lived in the USA with his wife and children since 2002 and has written a book, Have a Nice Day, on the subject of anti-Americanism. Having spent the past seven years travelling the country, as well as producing a documentary for Radio 4 about anti-Americanism, he has had plenty of opportunities to examine the American psyche, at a collective and individual level.
Justin begins his book by depicting a scene from his childhood, when he would accompany his mother (who was both a Quaker and a pacifist) to Saturday protest meetings in the Abbey churchyard in his home city of Bath. He describes his mother and her fellow band of protester friends as 'genteel and sensibly shod' but, a few years later, he was left wondering why this group of 'good people' only pointed an accusatory group finger at the USA. Why, for example, did their protests against nuclear weapons, concentrate solely on American warheads and not Soviet missiles?
Justin said: "These seemed to me to be more than attacks on the things America did. They were part of a general attitude towards America and the world, an ideology whose central tenet was that 'the Yanks are to blame'.
"In spite of ourselves, and in spite of all the evidence, we keep expecting Americans to come to their senses and have a National Health Service, or a ban on keeping pistols under suburban pillows, or affection for public transport. But, guys, they won't!
"On occasions European dislike of America comes close to racism. It is a deeply felt prejudice. Why else would English friends with impeccable anti-racist credentials ask of our children (who have grown up in the US), 'How will you get rid of their accents?' They assume, without ever questioning why, that we would want to."
What then, I ask him, of the future of anti-Americanism? Am I being too Doris Day-like, too Pollyanna-ish, to believe that the dawn of the Obama years, and a week in which he welcomed Gordon Brown to Washington, will eradicate the worst of the stereo-typing and scapegoating?
In his view, Obama will help but only up to a point: "European anti-Americanism has only a limited amount to do with who is in power here," he says, "it is also a function of our disappointment with ourselves, our jealousy at the success that America has been, and our seduction by the American Way; all of this comes together to make us hate ourselves for loving America. The relationship is complex – too complex for Obama to resolve."
Although I cannot believe that the all-pervasive European anti-Americanism of the past will entirely dissolve with this new administration, the Doris Day in me would like to hope that the changes we see in the White House will effect change in our judgments towards everyday, Americans.
While the hands of Congressmen and women are still recovering from the many standing ovations they gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his trip to Washington, his words, "There is no old Europe, no new Europe. There is only your friend Europe", are still ringing in our ears. If, as Gordon Brown states, this is the "most pro-American European leadership in living memory", hope springs eternal for this expat that Europeans will let us all have a nice new day.
• Have a Nice Day, by Justin Webb, is published by Short Books.
