I have a rather large website, with photos, (LOTS of travel photos) artwork, and a little (I think 2 or 2 pages) of “patriotic wallpaper”. (You can see similar wallpaper on the site listed in my profile.)
Most people visit my site for the travel photography, or the art. But this dweeb felt the need to write me this:
First off, my paintings are “not too bad”? EXCUSE ME?!?!? I am a fabulous, brilliant artist, you dweeb. Hmph.
Secondly—What? Do you think that you can write to every person in America who shows some patrioitic sentiment on their site, and tell them how you feel? Who asked you? Give me a freakin’ break.
I picture some guy in liederhosen sitting at a computer shaped like a giant horn, furiously typing away. Every few minutes, he pauses and scratches a name off a list 280,000,000 names long.
One down…
[sub]And Swissy can go to hell. Your artwork kicks ass.[/sub]
You have two hundred years of strife, war, intrigue and conflict. What do you get? The strongest and best-equipped army in the world, backed by the most efficient industrialized nation on earth.
You have five hundred years of peace and tranquility and what do you get? The cuckoo clock.
Well, I personally can understand that Swiss guy’s feelings, but that could just be me. And I don’t think he contacts every US patriot, he just coincidentally found your page, stumbled over the wallpapers, and spontaneously decided to tell you what he thinks about it.
Tell him you’ll cut out the patriotism when the Swiss release all the money stolen by the Nazi and Apartheid regimes and all the accounts holding the billions embezelled by various tin-pot dicatators around the world.
And what kind of a name is Reto, anyway? Sounds like a house cleaning product. Reto makes my floors shine! Reto makes my toilet smell like pines from the Swiss Alps! Use Reto and you’ll se what I mean!
You guys are hilarious! (Thanks for the compliment on my artwork Munch…)
I don’t think this guy stumbled upon my site by accident. It’s the day before the 4th of July. Coincidence…maybe. And even though he’s Swiss, I sure don’t think all Swiss people think like this. (It’s just that “Swiss Spam” had such a ring to it.)
The thing I don’t get is, why did he go to all of the trouble to tell me all this stuff? What am I going to be able to do about the world situation? Is my site going to cause WW III? All it is is patriotic wallpaper—I make no political statements at all, other than a brief mention of how Sept. 11th inspired me to make the wallpaper. And, if he is so “sickened” by any display of patriotism, why did he even click on my patriotic wallpaper page links?
There’s nothing wrong with being patriotic. but it always attracts this kind of thing. If I plastered my website with Union-Jacks or George’s Cross flags It’d be seen in a negative light.
By a lot of countries, (maybe not America) too much displaying of flags is seen as nationalistic, bordering on fascist.
I am not saying you are wrong to display the flag or be patriotic. I am just attempting to explain why you might attract such feedback. In fact I wish I could be a bit more patriotic.
I haven’t seen your artwork yet so I won’t comment on that.
In fact, be as patriotic as you possibly can be! show those terrorist bastards that you will not be moved!
The osama bin-liners of this world are the people who really hate American patriotism. So go mad. commision Old glory suits. get your cars re-painted in stars n stripes. and If any swiss dweeb wants to tell you it’ll cause world war 3. tell him that now that there are terrorists, patriotism no longer alienates western nations, it now brings them closer together. we should all be patriotic together.
Oh, sure, you all laugh now. But when yosemitebabe’s desktop wallpaper triggers global thermonuclear armageddon, then you’ll all be laughing out of the other side of your faces! Except you won’t have any! Faces, I mean!
I’ll OUTDO EVERYONE, I’M GET MY PENIS TATOOED, RED, WHITE AND BLUE.
Just in case you haven’t noticed, the rest of the world really doesn’t care for us right now, and neither do our allies. look into it, you’ll be… well, unpleasently suprised.
“does brazil have blacks?”
“there’s alota steak”
“If America blinks, the rest of the world will fall asleep, and ‘merica ain’t blickin’”
Naaah. It’s just so typical for this American hyperpatriotism that’s sometimes laughed about, sometimes causing disgust, among Europeans. And Reto (maybe from the Italian part of Switzerland, don’t know) just felt like telling you about his feelings right when he saw your page. Combined with other anti-American sentiments currently coming up in the media (you know, the ICC and stuff), he just felt pissed.
I wonder what Reto is doing when watching the Fourth of July celebrations on TV today.
You aren’t alone, yosemitebabe. I know of two satirical websites, whitehouse.org and Americans For Purity, that get a lot of hate mail from Europeans who take them at face value and say things like, “Your government policies just prove that Yanks are ignorant and Europeans are superior!”
When the site owners try to point out to these Europeans that the sites aren’t real and that anyone who wasn’t profoundly ignorant of American politics could see that instantly, the usual response is more anger, bizarre claims of European superiority, threats and mailbombs.
I’m not saying all Europeans are like that, of course, but the ones that are get pretty vocal.
Anyway, you should send Reto the URL for Corporate Mofo’s “Are You A True European?” quiz:
