You could argue that Americans were no fans of Europe right from the very beginning, but that would be somewhat childish of me.
Childish? Not at all - there’s a certain truth to that. Although it is interesting that our historic disdain and distrust of England and our strong friendship with France effectively swapped after World War II.
There’s no indication of any friendship in this hijack.
Once more, boofy, they are not playing for any country. They are playing for a privately owned commercial enterprise. And that commercial enterprise can legitimately call itself the “World Series” in the same way that a small telecommunications startup founded in Hattiesburg, Miss., can call itself “Worldcom” and in the same way that about 100 businesses located in Oklahoma City – the vast majority of which probably offer no service outside that particular locality – can use the word “World” in their trade names. “World Series” is a trade name that attempts to aggrandise the attached enterprise. Nothing more, nothing less. The assertion that there is some recognised standard for the use of the word “World” with regard to a commercial enterprise is ludicrous.
May I please just jump in to say, in regards to the whole eating etiquette and a few other things:
“Then, BAM, the ol’ fork in the eye!”
-Moe Szyslak
(And to any foreigner that doesn’t get that, eat my shorts.)
-Elliott
You know, this is true. And it is an American thing, I believe. Mark Twain talks about it in Life on the Mississippi when discussing the public reaction to a travel book critical of the country written by a British lady.
No, no. Those are just the countries that have produced players good enough to be in the American major leagues. Several other countries have professional baseball leagues including Italy’s Serie A1 (probably being the best among the European leagues).
The Asian baseball championships just finished with Japan winning the tourney and Taiwan coming in second. The International Baseball Federation is headquartered in Switzerland and has been around since 1938. Indeed, your own Australian Baseball championships just began about a week ago with Queensland bludgeoning Australia Provincial. The baseball World Cup is being held in the Netherlands in 2005 with 16 countries participating (just the winners of the continental tourneys). The Caribbean Series is coming up.
That said, the World Series has nothing to do with International Competiton. They are private clubs. Canada has had teams for several decades now and there is talk about opening or moving a franchise to Monterrey, Mexico. All that’s required to take part is to open up an MLB franchise. A purely private business undertaking, the World Series is not and has never been about “representing countries.”
You KEEP ON saying that they’re playing for the same country. NO THEY’RE NOT. The idea of what country they’re from simply doesn’t enter into it at all. No one mentions it. Stop bringing it up.
It never claimed to be, as we keep on telling you. I don’t know why you think you get to choose what it claims to be so that you can then demonstrate that it’s not really that thing.
Straw man, come on down!! No one is saying that it’s an international league, except for the fact that two Canadian cities field teams, and one of those has won repeat championships. Please just stop. It’s very tiring. Are you actually reading what people are saying?
So let’s recap the first-half action:
[ol]
We’ve had a re-enactment of the constitutional debate of 1789, on the merits of the Electoral College
The fact that the World Series is so-named bugs the HELL out of at least one Australian
There’s the fork-in-right-hand divide, but that puzzles as many Americans as it does non-Americans.
And “God Bless America”, but I think it’s been adequately pointed out that this is mostly spoken by politicians as an automatic boiler-plate speech closer. Not that that makes it much less curious to others…[/ol]
Did I miss anything?
First of all, I’ve gotta ask…am I the only person in the USA (Midwestern all the way, baby, if it matters) who really doesn’t give a damn one way or another if someone calls me a yank?
I’ve had a Limey call me that plenty of times, and it never bothered me at all. It’s just a word they use. Unless it’s meant intentionally as an insult, who cares? Is life so dull and are people so petty that they have to look to a perfectly innocuous nickname for insults?
As for the thing about Oz being “postage stamp sized”, I’ve never heard that idea from an American. Not in the least. Never. Maybe it’s because so much of Oz is generally uninhabited? Feh.
Then again, an ex of mine thought that Cuba was “somewhere near Vietnam”…
-Joe
I have heard this about us many times, and there’s a kernel of truth to it; however, keep in mind that travellers, such as strangers seated together on a train or plane, do tend to be more open than they would be in other contexts.
This is likely true of many people besides Americans, as P.G. Wodehouse makes reference to it in one of his stories involving train travel, and he wasn’t talking about Americans.
Though American, I don’t remember this particular point of etiquette ever being stressed in my upbringing, unlike other matters such as not putting one’s elbows on the table. Consequently I tend to keep the fork in my left hand. On the other hand, though I don’t usually follow the fork-in-right-hand rule, I think it has some value, as it forces you to eat a little more slowly, which could be beneficial for many people. This in turn allows you to get more enjoyment out of the meal than might otherwise be the case.
It might be a generational thing. Lefties only slightly older than me have told me they were “encouraged” to learn to be right handed. I imagine someone who was raised that way might be weirded out by someone eating with their left.
On the “clown” side of that complaint…
A good example of this, from way back, was a Monty Python sketch–I think it was on one of the two or three shows they did for the German audience. The basic idea was that these two American tourists walk into a Bavarian restaurant and are variously slapped, spilled on, and otherwise mistreated by singing waiters, and told that it’s a traditional Bavarian custom to do so. Clueless as the American visitors are, they sit and take it.
And I can recall a short play I had to read in German class, based on a similar situation, though without the restaurant staff acting so bizarrely. Among other things, the American husband has the temerity to greet someone at a neighboring table, and his German is so weak he asks for a “Stein”, meaning a mug of beer. This is in reference to the fact that, somehow, the German word Stein (=Stone) came to mean, to Americans, a “mug”, as in a mug of beer. So many Americans think that the word means the same thing in Germany, which is not the case. If memory serves, the perplexed waiter finally brings him a stone from a nearby field.
Yeah, I’d say we get our share of abuse.
Ummmm… don’t tell anyone, but I think I just learned something today. (Or, at least, been reminded of something I’d forgotten since my last German class 20 years ago…)
To ascenray and Cardinal: We are actually agreeing. WS baseball has nothing to do with a world competition, it’s just advertising misrepresentation to encourage fans to spend more money. My problem is that the WS exists only in one (and a bit) countries, making the advertising executives even BIGGER wankers than usual.
Please post shorts for consumption.
This is a strange thread, its a wonder a mod hasn’t put it out of its misery.
Back to the OP. Americanisms.
Brown paper shopping bags - as seen on TV - dont know if other parts of world use these. Has to be better for the environment than the plastic ones they use here in Oz that kill dolphins and other cuddly animals.
Taking loudly in public - noticed this traveling.
Food quantity is seen as more important than quality - from talking to other travellers and my experience in NYC.
Country of extremes - as has been noted before. eg so much violence but so many really nice people.
Driving instead of walking short distances - this may be a myth.
Eating chineese take away out of cardboard boxes - cool.
Come off it. You surely can’t pretend that the long-term conversation between Americans and Europeans has been us picking on you? There are endless examples of foreigners being negatively stereotyped throughout popular culture in the United States, not just recently but as far back as you want to go. The SDMB is full of it too.
A Monty Python sketch? Please – who appeared on that show without being ridiculed?
Put the violins away; if you take your share of abuse you give it out too. Anybody who read the OP of this thread and took it as an opportunity to accuse Americans of being ridiculous was wrong, of course, but if you’re suggesting that you are generally the butt of the joke and it’s time you stood up for yourselves against the nasty Eurotrash then you really are being ridiculous.
[QUOTE=antechinusDriving instead of walking short distances - this may be a myth.
Eating chineese take away out of cardboard boxes - cool.[/QUOTE]
I haven’t slogged through this whole thread, so I don’t know if the walking thing has been addressed. If not, I’d say it’s true, not necessarily because of the lazy American stereotype, but because most places (at least what I’ve been exposed to) aren’t pedestrian friendly. Unless you live in a city (where people do walk a lot), there are few sidewalks, few bike paths, and enormous distances between things.
RE: the Chinese food boxes, when friends of ours visited us from Australia, the first thing they wanted to do (after making sure WalMart really does sell guns) was to get Chinese food in the little white boxes. Bizarre.
It’s strange the things that stand out to foreign eyes, but in Britain, Chinese (and Indian) takeaway food comes in flat foil or plastic boxes like the ones shown here (scroll down). I don’t know what they use in Oz, but I’d guess it would be the same?
First off, England does have at least one specifically-composed national anthem. It was written by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, and is definitely worth a look. It’s lyrics can be found here.
(Actually, the dialogue before the song addresses precisely the issue of there being no English national anthem, and is quite funny. " ‘There will always be an England’. Well, that’s not saying very much, really. I mean, there will always be the north pole… if some dangerous clown doesn’t go and melt it." and “when I was a boy, we didn’t go around saying how wonderful we were… everybody KNEW that”)
Several other issues:
-I can’t believe anyone is actually upset about it being called The World Series, or thinks that that actually indicates something about US culture. Why is it called The World Series? Because it’s always been called The World Series, at least in any timeframe that matters to the people who are alive today. If we’re such assholes, then why don’t we call The Super Bowl, which is inarguably the world championship of American Football, the World Bowl?
-Regarding “God Bless America”, it bugs me a bit (I’m an agnostic) that it pops up so often in the State of the Union address, etc. But I admit that one of my strongest memories of 9/11 is the congress more-or-less-spontaneously singing “God Bless America”, despite the massive state of national shock we were all in. I’m not sure what my point is.
-Regarding the electoral college, and this may be a lengthy hijack, I think that representation in both the senate and the electoral college is dumb. But then, I think the idea of there being distinct states with distinct laws is pretty dumb. Maybe it comes from growing up in California, but I really don’t have any strong attachment to my state, as a meaningful political entity, any more than to the county or city that I happen to live in. The real problem is that there are logical groupings of people which might end up with no voice at all due to geographical distribution. If 25% of the population of each separate state is (say) farmers, but the farmers’ candidates always lose to the big city candidates, you’ll end up with zero representatives of farmers in the senate. (Obviously, I’m oversimplifying). I’d prefer a system where some of the voting is done on a nationwide basis, so if there’s a candidate who’s very pro-farm, he could get votes from farmers around the country, and the senate would end up with a meaningful voice for farmers. (I believe the Israeli electoral system works something like that).
As for the “should a big state’s voice be more important than a small state’s” question, well, why the hell not? There are way way way more Americans living in California than in Rhode Island. Americans’ voices should carry the same weight. Therefore, California, as a whole, should exert more weight in national politics than Rhode Island. Of course, Rhode Island is only part of New England, and New England as a whole should exert about the same weight as California (assuming their populations are somewhere close to equal, which I’m guesstimating to be true).