Dear Politicians, Media Types, and everyone else: please stop using the phrase “Leader of the Free World”. It annoys me when Bush says it. It annoyed me when Kerry said it. It annoys me when the various talking heads that pervade my television and radio say it.
The POTUS is the leader of the US. Not Britain. Not Canada. Certainly not France or Germany or Switzerland. In fact, there are lots and lots of other democracies around the world that President Bush is not the leader of. He may like to think he rules the world, but no. Just America.
Power is as power does. What I object to is the word “free”. He is simply the leader of the world — in the same sense that the biggest gorilla is the leader of the group.
I’m sure you know that “leader” in this sense doesn’t mean “ruler” but something akin to “first amongst equals” which, like it or not, we’ve been since the end of World War II. I can see where people outside America or even those inside its borders might find it condescending and patronizing though.
Leader implies that people follow him. That simply ain’t so, outside of the US.
Can we agree on “Guy with the biggest guns”?
or “Biggest turd in the bowl”?
BTW, when someone uses the phrase “He has the ear of the president”, does anyone else picture GWB chasing them around the oval office, yelling “give it back, give it bak”?
It is the summum of rudiness.
It is the summum of arrogance.
It is the summum of patronizing denegration of the rest of the world and all the leaders of this world’s nations.
Yet above all it is the summum of stupidity in its obvious incorrectness.
(I think it is also typcial “USA” and by this I think no picture is needed for those outside the USA).
Salaam. A
Or it’s simply a hold over from the cold war era when the US was the de facto leader of NATO and the western alliance. It could even be said to hold up under scrutiny with Bush Sr’s UN backed coalition in Gulf War I as a seminal piece of “Free World” leadership.
It’s a little dated but I can think of at least a dozen more irritating things.
Isn’t the phrase a bit out of date anyway? I was under the impression that the “leader of the free world” tag arose to point out America’s primus inter pares role in opposing the machinations of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations. We are certainly the most powerful and influential nation in the world, but I’m damned if we’re leading anyone. At the moment, I think we are serving as an object lesson in the perils of hubris.
Surely you mean “typical of the mindset of certain people within the U.S.”, no? As lumping us all together and saying “they’re all the same” is just as patronizing, arrogant, and rude as, say, lumping all the middle east together and saying “they’re all the same.”
