How odd. I work with a number of people from every part of the world. Smart, educated people.
All of them wondered why the government & media were so concerned about the President’s sex life. Clinton was seen as an inteligent guy & a good president.
All of them wondered why anyone would vote for a dangerous idiot. But they understood that Bush’s accession to office in 2000 involved more than mere “voting.”
If I have a chance to go overseas, I’ll gladly let people know what I think of Bush.
And yet, there is barely a titter if/when Willie Nelson criticizes Bush.
Suggests to me there is something different in how it was done…
“All parts of the world” is rather vague, akin to the meaningless phrase “world opinion.” If you were talking to Europeans (or for that matter, transnational “citizens of the world”), I’d expect exactly the response you got; plenty of European politicians openly have mistresses, so to them it was no big deal. I was not in Europe, I was in a part of the world where the affair (more accurately, the scandalous nature of it, and the lying about it) was considered disgraceful.
Which parts of the world? For a start, Germany, Italy, India, Iran, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Nigeria, China, Venezuela, Argentina & the UK.
They thought a stolen election was more scandalous than sex. And they have not grown fond of Bush.
(I’d like to add that these opinions were NOT volunteered. They came up in discussion, after this Texan had indicated I did not worship our Beloved Wartime President.)
Now, that I’ll agree with. Some of it might be sexism, some of it might be as to how it was done. But that ‘Patriotism’ that DrDeth proposes sure as heck makes me see red. Hell, I’d wear a ‘better dead than red’ shirt before I followed what he describes as patriotism there.
The point, such as it was, which I was making, is that other country stars have criticized the man who clears brush, without having their careers ruined. People ain’t that stupid. Close to, but not quite.
Fine. I’m not sure what this adds, other than that I suppose you are one of those I referred to when I said “YMMV, obviously.”
I’ve never voted for Bush; nonetheless I’d feel uncomfortable recounting his weaknesses to those “outside the family,” as it were.
YMMV, obviously.
Why? Are Londoners so stupid and prejudiced that they don’t know the difference between a president of a country and the electorate of that country-- less than half of whom voted for Bush in the 2000 election, btw? No, I don’t think so. Bottom line, is they needn’t have openned their traps in the first place. They wouldn’t have had the courage to make the same comment in Texas, or probably anywhere else in the US for that matter.
But all’s well that ends well. Don’t they have some new movie out and aren’t they riding a wave of popularity again?
Nobody needs to “recount” Bush’s weaknesses. Any thinking person could see them when Natalie spoke out. And they’ve only become more glaringly obvious in since then.
This Texan will tell anyone who asks that I’ve thought of Bush as a half bright aging fratboy since he ran for Governor. He was a miserable Governor & Texas has had some doozies. He’s been a worse than miserable President.
Bush has caused damage outside the borders of the USA. Why should criticizing him respect those borders?
Sigh. Read my damn post. I do not consider that “patriotism”, it’s the CW fanbase that calls that “style” to be “patriotism”.
The problem with this is that it seems that when certain people tell you not to criticize America abroad, they really mean “Don’t criticize at all”.
I’ve heard conservatives respond to people in other contries who criticize our president/country by saying they should “Come here and say that”. Of course, if someone here says it, they’ll respond “If you don’t like this country, why don’t you leave?”
They don’t want to hear criticism, period.
Hell, no, it’s an obligation. Just imagine what the rest of the world might think if they interpreted our universal silence in their lands as tacit support of our government’s wantoness and idiocy. They might think that all Americans are sufficiently lacking in judgement and decency as to endorse the Bush administration, especially their actions abroad. I have seen it, and will continue to see it, as my duty to let people know there are at least a few Americans who are extremely unhappy with how are nation is being run, with who is running it, with those who voted for it, and who don’t buy into the faith-based nonsense that seems to dominate the right side of our political spectrum.
I don’t especially care if an American criticizes U.S. government policy while abroad. Making huge sweeping generalizations about the presumed stupidity/religiosity/naivete/general objectionableness of the American people is both ignorant and poor form.
I suspect that what Kimstu alluded to (the phenomenon of trying to curry favor with your foreign hosts/acquaintances) plays a role in some of these critiques. I hear overtones of it on this board at times.
In terms of tackiness, nothing quite beats jumping without provocation on a foreigner (or in the case of the U.S., someone from another state whose policies you dislike) to take him/her to task for something you don’t like about the person’s nation/state of origin. And for non-Americans - unless you’re sure the American you’re talking to shares your views, launching into diatribes about the evils of Amerika is a good way to promote a) a conviction that you are a xenophobic idiot, b) defensive argumentation rather than dialogue, or c) both.
No, it’s what you think the CW fanbase calls patriotism. Don’t put straw men up so you can knock them down. Willie alone can blow your argument down.
Exactly. Think about all the calls that are being made for moderate Muslims to criticize their fanatics (nevermind that there almost always are critics). Suddenly when it comes to turn the mirror on themselves, it’s a horrible breach of etiquette.
So, why was the CW fanbase so damn mad at the DC?
Got me. Probably more how they said it and how it was reported than anything else. I could investigate. But first, I have to find out if the ‘CW fanbase’ was ‘so damn mad’ at the Dixie Chicks. Cause the ‘CW fanbase’ wasn’t quite where they were selling all their music, they tended to be a bit more crossover.
I took that to mean moderate Muslims in those other countries should come out against extremists in those countries.
Suppose you had a relative who was the town bully. Everyone in town hated him/feared him. Your own family is at a loss as to what to do.
Now a stranger comes up to you and says “Your relative is a scumbag, what are you going to do about it?”
My reaction would be to tell the person :
a) it’s a family matter
b) what I do about it is none of your business
c) fuck off
Now I had no choice in having this relative (or in the Bush example, I didn’t vote for him).
Still I’m stuck with him and I don’t want anyone outside the family butting in even if it affects them directly. We clean our own house. In the Bush example we vote him and his associates out.
We do not try to court favor with outsiders.
What should you do when you’re talking to a foreign audience and they bring up US politics?
My anecdote: I was giving a talk to a class of highschoolers in a remote part of India in December of 2003, and at the end their teacher invited them to ask general questions about my work in India or my home country or whatever. I fielded a few softballs and then some bright boy pipes up, “Why did the US go to war with Iraq?”
What was I supposed to say? I have always been opposed to the Iraq invasion, and I have a very low opinion of the motives behind it. But it didn’t seem right to use an audience of schoolchildren as a sounding board for my own individual political perspective. Moreover, as a housemate of mine from Turkey once expressed it, somebody living or traveling overseas is a sort of informal ambassador for their home country, and should behave so as not to hurt its reputation. I wanted to be as fair as possible to my country’s official representatives and policies without being dishonest about my own views. So I started out with “Well, we were told that the government of Iraq had some potentially very dangerous weapons…”
The whole class burst out laughing. I have never felt so humiliated in my life (and that includes the time when I was ten years old and lost my swimsuit top in the swimming pool). There I was, describing to the best of my ability the official policy rationales put forth by my country’s leaders, the richest and most powerful country in the world, and a bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old Indian village kids—most of whom were the first in their families even to be able to read and write—knew that it was bullshit.
In nearly forty-three years of life on three different continents, that was the only time I felt literally ashamed to be an American. And I felt so furious with the Administration for being such a bunch of conscienceless ham-fisted buffoons that if I merely tried to represent fairly their official position on foreign policy, schoolchildren would laugh at me. (And these people weren’t militant Bengali Communists or anything like that: this is a community that overall has a very positive view of America and gets a lot of help from American sponsors. If they think official American policy is ridiculous, then you know that the emperor has no clothes.)
When I think of that incident, I can’t help feeling sympathy for Americans who indulge in America-bashing in foreign countries. Yes, I think citizens do have some sort of ethical duty not to embarrass their own countries in foreign eyes by unnecessary or excessive criticisms. But by God, a country also has an ethical duty not to embarrass its own citizens by making a complete fucking ass of itself, and I don’t think our current government has been fulfilling that duty.
In the case of someone asking for your opinion while abroad, it would seem strange to just remain silent.
I think the shit-storm arose from volunteering one’s opinion, presumably to court favor.
One needn’t indulge. Since the Iraq invasion, my wife and I have been to New Zealand, France, and Switzerland. During both of those trips we were on vacation, and quite happy to leave American politics behind us. But after a while, as we got familiar with the people we met there, and we’d all had a few drinks, the conversation inevitably turned to Iraq, with my wife and I being questioned questioned by our new friends. Their sentiments were almost precisely the same in each country: They were completely and utterly baffled. “You seem like sensible enough folks, so how could this have happened?” “Do people in America really think that 9/11 was in any way connected with Saddam Hussein?” “I just don’t understand it. I can’t even see what it is that you’re getting out of it.” On only one occasion did anyone get a little “pushy” with their own politics, during a dolphin cruise of the Bay of Islands in N.Z., where a British tourist implored my wife and I to vote for John Kerry. Since we planned to anyway, we weren’t too upset, but we were a bit surprised. The rest of the time, we were met with an honest, heartfelt desire to understand what it was that must be going on in the U.S. to have, apparently, driven everyone there mildly insane.
We felt very strongly, after just one of those conversations in N.Z., that the American opposition to Bush and his dirty war was not being heard adequately abroad, and we felt, if asked, no hesitation in expressing our disgust, and also reminding them of how many other people in the U.S. besides us were equally unhappy (practically everyone we know, in fact, excluding some fundy wingnut family in the Midwest).
The fact is, people want to know what the Hell is the matter with us. I see no reason to stay silent if asked, or exercise some kind of bogus patriotic decorum because a pack of jingoistic conservatives finds such behavior tactless, in their bizarre sense of what it is to be “proper”.